Bogland
K. E. Dennis
I keep thinking of that wonderful, evocative post from bren [aka
Brawn] about a day out in the bog. Never posted a follow-up to it,
not even a bow of appreciation… too caught up in work &
techno-troubles @ the time (& all those other excuses)….
But I keep thinking about it, & going back to the POTW section of
Partisan Cheese [where it is most deservedly enshrined, @
http://www.wwa.com/~abardubh/1998/potw46.html] to re-read it, &
feeling the same sense of pleasure & appreciation each time.
It isn't because of a sense of recognition, of course, not directly
@ least. I've never been out for a day of turf-cutting such as bren
describes so eloquently. There are still a few thousand hectares of
raised bog in the midlands, cut by hand, but most of the peat
production in Offaly @ least is fully mechanized.
Bord na Móna workers have their own culture & camaraderie, of
course, but it's not an experience that's shared w/ the whole
community, w/ children…
& that, the social scientist in me recognises as a specific
real-world example of one of the most significant - & painful -
changes wrought by the spread of industrialism & capitalism: the
ongoing, possibly inexorable separation of the spheres of work & of
"private life." The re-definition of work as something *inherently*
separate from other human activities….
Ireland is undergoing, in rapid order, many of those changes, & I
don't have to tell @ least the Irish folks in this ng how clearly
that's reflected in public (& private) debate. A glance @ any day's
Irish Times articles & letters column makes that apparent. But they
rarely speak so clearly as bren:
> I'm 26,
> my childhood was practically yesterday and it *was* traditional
and it
> *was* rural and it was wonderful.
It certainly sounds so.
> Sometimes when I read this group and it's incessant tendency to
instantly
> oppress anything traditional or rural in case the nation is
inundated with
> TooraLoora seeking tourists, I wonder about the validity of it
all.
I know from personal experience that deep love & respect for a way
of life in which all human activities are fully integrated is not
just a rural phenomenon. I also know how real a loss can come
hand-in-hand w/ the gains of that transformation of an economy.
I've lived chunks of my life in rural areas, both in Ireland & the
U.S., & seen too much of the back-breaking work & the economic
uncertainties to have romantic fantasies about the farming life.
It's not just in anonymous big cities that lives can spin out of
control, after all.
But I confess that, as a visitor (& too briefly a resident) in your
green & pleasant land, I can hardly fault those tourists who are so
embarrassingly enthusiastic about the beauty of the Irish
countryside & the unique charms of the rural way of life there….
> […] These people are still there. They lead
> the same life and they are not country bumpkins, they are
intelligent
> vibrant Irish people who embrace a lifestyle that is not perfect,
but is
> certainly one I would take over cynical superiority anyday.
IMHO it would indeed be an irreparable loss of something precious if
the way of life bren described so movingly were to be dismissed as
of little value in defining the future form of Irish cultural
identity.
respectfully submitted,
|K.E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.
-------------------
Bogland
Seamus Heaney
Poems: 1965-1975
pub., 1988, The Noonday Press
-------------------
Bogland
For T. P. Flanaghan
We have no prairies,
To slice a big sun at evening --
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encroaching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astonishing crate full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage,
The wet center is bottomless.
-------------------
K. E. Dennis
ritually slain were naked. This was either part of the ritual or as
punishment," [Dr Raghnall Ó Floinn of the National Museum] said.
"There are two schools of thought. On one hand there are those who
believe that there was some sort of ritual killing for religious
reasons. The other school of thought is that the victims broke the
rules of society and were executed, which in itself is a ritual."
Irish Times, Oct 29, 1998
http://www.irish-times.com/irish-times/paper/1998/1029/mid2.html
respectfully submitted,
|K.E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.
-------------------
Punishment
Seamus Heaney
North
pub., 1975, The Noonday Press
-------------------
Punishment
I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.
It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.
I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.
Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:
her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring
to store the memories of love.
Little adulteress,
Before they punished you
you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,
I almost love you,
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur
of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:
I who have stood dumb
When your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,
who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
-----------
K. E. Dennis
- but clearly a culchie @ heart….
respectfully submitted,
|K.E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.
------------------------
A Nest In A Wall
Richard Murphy
The Price of Stone
Pub. 1985, Wake Forest University Press
------------------------
A Nest In A Wall
Smoky as peat your lank hair on my pillow
Burns like a tinker's fire in a mossy ditch.
Before I suffocate, let me slowly suck
From your mouth a tincture of mountain ash,
A red infusion of summer going to seed.
Ivy-clumps loosen the stone-work of my heart.
Come like a wood-pigeon gliding there to roost!
I float a moment on a gust sighing for ever
Gently over your face where two swans swim.
Let me kiss your eyes in the slate-blue calm
Before their Connemara clouds return.
A spancelled goat bleats in our pleasure ground.
A whippet snarls on its chain. The fire dies out.
Litter of rags and bottles in the normal rain.
Your country and mine, love, can it still exist?
The unsignposted hawthorn lane of your body
Leads to my lichenous walls and gutted house.
Your kind of beauty earth has almost lost.
Although we have no home in the time that's come,
Coming together we live in ouur own time.
Make your nest of moss like a wren in my skull.
------------------------
K. E. Dennis
hopefully>....
By now, I reckon Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill needs no introduction.
respectfully submitted,
|K.E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.
----------------------------------------------
Amhrán An Fhir Óig / Young Man's Song
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Selected Poems: Rogha Dánta
pub. 1986, Raven Arts Press
(trans., Michael Hartnett)
----------------------------------------------
Amhrán An Fhir Óig
Mo dhá láimh
ar do chíocha,
do dhá nead éin,
do leaba fhlocais.
Sníonn do chneas
chomh bán le sneachta,
chomh geal le haol,
chomh mín leis an táth lín.
Searraim mo ghuaille
nuair a bhraithim
do theanga i mo phluic,
do bhéal faoi m'fhiacla.
Osclaíonn trínse
faoi shoc mo chéachta.
Nuair a shroisim bun na claise
raidim.
Mise an púca
a thagann san oíche,
an robálaí nead,
am domhaintreabhadóir.
Loitim an luachair mórthimpeall.
Tugaim do mhianach portaigh
chun míntíreachais.
-------------------------
Young Man's Song
My two hands
on your breast
your two bird's nests
your flock bed
your skin flows --
as white as snow
as bright as lime
as fine as a bunch of flax.
I stretch my shoulder
when I feel
your tongue in my cheek
your mouth beneath my teeth.
A trench is opened up
by the sock of my plough.
When I reach the furrow's end
I buck.
I am the púca
who comes in the night -
nest-robber
world-plougher:
I destroy the surrounding reeds,
I reclaim your bogland.
-------------------------
seán
K. E. Dennis <den...@mail.montclair.edu> wrote in article
<3671ED18...@mail.montclair.edu>...
> "[…]The bog bodies which have been found and are thought to have been
> ritually slain were naked. This was either part of the ritual or as
> punishment," [Dr Raghnall Ó Floinn of the National Museum] said.
>
> "There are two schools of thought. On one hand there are those who
> believe that there was some sort of ritual killing for religious
> reasons. The other school of thought is that the victims broke the
> rules of society and were executed, which in itself is a ritual."
> Irish Times, Oct 29, 1998
> http://www.irish-times.com/irish-times/paper/1998/1029/mid2.html
>
My school of thought is that they were mugged on the way home from the pub.
Rough times all round, never mind the rituals.
SeánO
eala
>Just one more poem on the bogland theme <tho there are many more, she hints
>hopefully>....
Thank you, Karen. And Bren.
Bogland
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encroaching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
by Seamus Heaney
eala
eala_...@my-dejanews.com
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
W. B. Y E A T S In prescience of SCI
Jacuzio, Jerry
A poem by Mrs. J. Brantigan
The sky burns your eyes as you drink on the bank,
down from the bridge by the plant,
dragging in pike by the dark river mile,
sit and smile
with the bony-arsed men.
A far-too-famous pub at the mouth of the town,
where farmers sit blacknosed and panned,
as if all the peat in the air ain't enough,
downing snuff,
and ignoring their wives.
She told me her grandfather came from this place,
that held Roscommon back from the world,
and they heated a thousand midlander hearths,
with their farts,
and their dreaming girls.
K. E. Dennis
> Bogland
> A poem by Mrs. J. Brantigan
>
> The sky burns your eyes as you drink on the bank,
> down from the bridge by the plant,
> dragging in pike by the dark river mile,
> sit and smile
> with the bony-arsed men.
[snip rest of brilliant effort]
Jerry Jerry Jerry it's really not right you should do this to me.
I mean, here I am howling & gasping, w/ the EMS outside (obviously
called by panic-striken neighbours who heard the unnatural whooping
sound emanating from my apt.) banging on the door & shouting "are
you all right in there?" while I writhe helplessly on the floor,
laughing insanely....
I'm so glad you're back, Jer.
<trying hopelessly to catch her breath>,
vaug...@ul.ie
den...@mail.montclair.edu wrote:
> Just one more poem on the bogland theme <tho there are many more, she hints
> hopefully>....
Well, one at least...
> By now, I reckon Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill needs no introduction.
Or Seamus Heaney...
bren
The Tollund Man
- Seamus Heaney
I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,
Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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Jacuzio, Jerry
> Jerry Jacuzio posted:
>
> > Bogland
> > A poem by Mrs. J. Brantigan
> >
> > The sky burns your eyes as you drink on the bank,
> > down from the bridge by the plant,
> > dragging in pike by the dark river mile,
> > sit and smile
> > with the bony-arsed men.
> snipped for space....
>
> I'm so glad you're back, Jer.
>
> <trying hopelessly to catch her breath>,
Memories of Shannonbridge, K.
Thank you, although I'm not sure how 'back' I am...
Jer 'at work with flu yet' Mac an Jac
K. E. Dennis
> den...@mail.montclair.edu wrote:
> > Just one more poem on the bogland theme <tho there are many more, she hints
> > hopefully>....
>
> Well, one at least...
>
> > By now, I reckon Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill needs no introduction.
>
> Or Seamus Heaney...
>
> bren
[snip "The Tollund Man," by Seamus Heaney]
I was going to add Heaney's "Bog Quenn" to the thread.
It can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/1621/heaney.html#Bog Queen
[Seamus Heaney, North, pub. 1975, Faber & Faber]
But reading "Tollund Man" in the light of current events, I keep seeing over &
over again the verses
>I could risk blasphemy,
>Consecrate the cauldron bog
>Our holy ground and pray
>Him to make germinate
>
>The scattered, ambushed
>Flesh of labourers, [….]
>
>Tell-tale skin and teeth
>Flecking the sleepers
>Of four young brothers [….]
…& I remember that Heaney has written many of his poems - especially those in
"North" - w/ an agonized sense of how many innocents have died. & for what
cause?
Then I thought of this poem by Eavan Boland, which draws on the old folk belief
about the theft of children by the sídhe to of the deep desire to guard & protect
that innocence, & had to post it.
respectfully submitted,
|K.E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.
---------------------------
On Holiday
Eavan Boland
The Journey & Other Poems
pub. 1987, Arlen House
--------------------------
On Holiday
Ballyvaughan.
Peat and salt.
How the wind bawls
across the mountains,
scalds the orchids
of the Burren.
They used to leave milk
out once on these window-sills
to ward away
the child-stealing spirits.
The sheets are damp.
We sleep between the blankets.
The light cotton of the curtains
Lets the light in.
You wake first thing
and in your five-year-old-size
striped nightie you are
everywhere trying everything:
the springs on the bed,
the hinges on the windows.
You know you’re a's and b's
But there's a limit now
to what you'll believe.
When dark comes I leave
A superstitious feast
of wheat biscuits, apples,
orange juice out for you
and wake to find it eaten.
------------------