Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit
By John McDaid | Monday, 17 March 2008
In honor of Patrick's day, wanted to share a bit of a poem about his father by Nobel-laureate Seamus Heaney
As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.
Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable...
— From The Harvest Bow
Tags:
Comments
Portsmouth Citizen
Mon, 03/17/2008 - 4:51pm
Permalink
Wonderful Irish Tale
John:
Beautiful poem! Thank you.
In the spirit of the day, here's a link to a PDF of one of my favorite stories, a wonderful Irish tale, The Crock of Gold, by James Stephens:
http://books.google.com/books/pdf/The_Crock_of_Gold.pdf?id=SJInAAAAMAAJ&...
The copyright on the work has expired, so it is part of the library at Google Books. You can also find plain text over at Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/crkgd10.txt , but I prefer the scanned google book as a PDF. It feels more book-like. If you get into it and you want a hard copy, a nicely illustrated copy of the novel can be purchased at the usual sources (amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, etc.).
Enjoy!
John McDaid
Mon, 03/17/2008 - 10:22pm
Permalink
Thanks
Hi, Portsmouth Citizen...
I've downloaded and am about 20 pages in and loving it. Thanks so much for sharing this.
Cheers.
-j