Patrick Kavanagh

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of th...

Upon a bank I sat, a child made
Of one small primrose flowering in my mind
Better than wealth it is,
I said, to

We are the children of light, Wise, not companioned By goats In a condemned graveyard
Backward blowing Blizzards of memory Flatten out The genealogies
But here a point, The objective essence We work in
We shall not drink from the st...

I do not think of you lying in the wet
Of a Monaghan graveyard;
I
You walking down a lane among the

I have lived in important places,
When great events were decided, who
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims

We borrowed the loan of Kerr's
To go to Dundalk with butter,
Brought him home the evening before the
And exile that night in Mucker

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the
Pouring redemption for me, that I
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
And there's the half-talk code of
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight
Half-past eight and there is not a

Clay is the word and clay is the
Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows
Along the side-fall of the hill - Maguire and his men
If we watch them an hour is there anything we can

On an apple-ripe September
Through the mist-chill fields I
With a pitch-fork on my
Less for use than for devilment

O stony grey soil of
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my
And gave me your clod-conceived

Back once again in wild, wet Monaghan Exiled from thought and feeling,
A mean brutality reigns:
It is really a horrible position to be in And I equate myself with Dante And all who have lived outside civilization
It isn't a question...

Every old man I
Reminds me of my
When he had fallen in love with
One time when sheaves were gathered

Now leave the check-reins slack,
The seed is flying far today -The seed like stars against the
Eternity of April clay
This seed is potent as the

Beauty was that    Far vanished flame,    Call it a star    Wanting better name
And gaze and gaze    Vaguely until    Nothing is left    Save a grey ghost-hill
Here wait I    On the world's rim    Stretching out hands    To Seraphim

My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had
Incurious as my black hills that are