Patrick Kavanagh

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

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

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...

They laughed at one I loved-The triangular hill that
Under the Big Forth
They said That I was bounded by the whitethorn
Of the little farm and did not know the world

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

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...

There's a wind blowing Cold through the corridors, A ghost-wind, The flapping of defeated wings, A hell-fantasy From meadows damned To eternal April And listening, listening To the wind I hear The throat-rattle of dying men, From whose ears oozes ...

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

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

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

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