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  • cvillelisa
    Mar 16 8:32 AM
    Reply





    I thought it would be fun in light of St. Patrick's Day to post some Irish poetry!



    I Hear an Army

    I hear an army charging upon the land,
    And the thunder of horses plunging; foam about their knees:
    Arrogant, in black armour,behind them stand,
    Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the Charioteers.

    They cry into the night their battle name:
    I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
    They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
    Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

    They come shaking in triumph their long grey hair:
    They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
    My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
    My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?



  • cvillelisa
    March 16 ↑
    Reply





    Postscript by Seamus Heaney


    And some time make the time to drive out west
    Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
    In September or October, when the wind
    And the light are working off each other
    So that the ocean on one side is wild
    With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
    The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
    By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
    Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
    Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
    Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
    Useless to think you'll park or capture it
    More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
    A hurry through which known and strange things pass
    As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
    And catch the heart off guard and blow it open


  • zara
    March 27 ↑
    Reply
    This is the poem I have been trying, off and on, to memorize for some 4 years. I love it! Those headstrong-looking heads, though, they've always bugged me. Did we have this talk before?

    If I were to meet Mr. Heaney, I would ask him about that phrase. Sometimes I think he put it in just to jar the reader with its imperfection. I dunno.


  • zara
    March 27 ↑
    Reply
    Who's this, James Joyce? Dylan Thomas?

    • just mercedes
      March 28 ↑
      Reply
      I don't think Dylan Thomas was Irish.

      • zara
        March 28 ↑
        Reply
        Ack! Of course, he was Welsh; that'll teach me to fire off comments too late on a Friday night! (I knew that...honest....)
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