Always unexpected, It’s always some little thing. A word or gesture or photograph, Turned up in the kitchen drawer, That shocks into reality again, And briefly It is yesterday, As you are hurtling along, In time, In some space that’s forever routine. You’re jostled into contemplating, The awe and finality, That brings a prayer and a tear, For a loved one, Gone.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
So, alone and happy in the world, We two in a rustic wilderness Can listen to the wind And its tale of the centuries. The present and its ephemeral importance Can be forgotten in this old house, Cherishing its own quiet wisdom. The years are great teachers. Man’s yearning is a whisper In a tumultuous and eternal sea. Hear the wind sigh and breathe, All is vanity.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
Today, Friday, 27th March 2020, should have been “Daffodil Day“.
Normally, today would have been a day when communities all over Tipperary and indeed Ireland, congregated to support people and families affected by the scourge of cancer.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic now raging across Ireland, it has become necessary to cancel such gatherings to protect lives. So, for those who can, why not connect with the link shown HERE and donate to help fund the Irish Cancer Society’s vital services and research.
“To Daffodils” By 17th-century English Lyric Poet and Cleric, Robert Herrick
Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain’d his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having pray’d together, we Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer’s rain; Or as the pearls of morning’s dew, Ne’er to be found again. END
Extract from Poem ‘Home, Wounded‘ By Sydney Thompson Dobell
There blows The first primrose, Under the bare bank roses. There is but one, And the bank is brown, But soon the children will come down, The ringing children come singing down, To pick their Easter posies, And they’ll spy it out, my beautiful, Among the bare brier-roses; And when I sit here again alone, The bare brown bank will be blind and dull, Alas for Easter posies!
By the Late, Great, Poet, Playwright and Translator, Seamus Heaney
All I know is a door into the dark. Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring, The unpredictable fantail of sparks Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water. The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square, Set there immoveable: an altar Where he expends himself in shape and music. Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose, He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows; Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
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