Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

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Diane

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by Diane »

Really good again, L. I am glad you introduced Mr Kavanagh. This time of year is all about renewal.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
"Dreeping" is an interesting word...dripping and deep?
lonndubh
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Location: Ireland

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

Happy Christmas to you all .
I was very fortunate to walk P Kavanaghs fields in Shancoduff Innisken this Autumn and to put a posy of berries and wild flowers on his grave
Here now is one of my favourite poems which brings me back to my own Christmas childhood in Ireland.

A Christmas Childhood

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost—
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw—
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood's. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch
Or any common sight the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

My father played the melodeon
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodeon called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy's hanging hill,
I looked and three whin* bushes rode across
The horizon — The Three Wise Kings.

An old man passing said:
'Can't he make it talk'—
The melodeon. I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife's big blade—
There was a little one for cutting tobacco,
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodeon,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary's blouse.
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mat james
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by mat james »

So this whole scene occurred 100 years ago, to the day, exactly!
Thanks Brid.
I would kneel at that grave to listen to this little boy also.

Do you think the last verse suggests that he felt one with the young Jesus?

Mat.
"Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart." San Juan de la Cruz.
lonndubh
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

mat james wrote:Do you think the last verse suggests that he felt one with the young Jesus?
Indeed Mat ,I think he did .
isnt there something familiar yet idyllic of this the earliest memory of his family home ,work and leisure,mothering and fathering ,the earthly and the spiritual :all inter-mingle?
I think together they combine to make that rare flower,'a white rose'
and this domestic scene evokes something of the aura surrounding the Holy Family of Nazareth.
Here is the Holy Family of Inniskeen.
nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife's big blade—
There was a little one for cutting tobacco,
And I was six Christmases of age
.


On a lighter note I think a young lad of 6 got away with murder 100 years ago.
Imagine the same scene today ;a 6 year old nicking 6 nicks on the door -post with the big blade of a pen-knife ; We would probably look about councelling :shock: :shock:
lonndubh
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

mat james wrote:I would kneel at that grave to listen to this little boy also.
And pray for him who walked apart on the hills loving lifes miracles
Attachments
PK inniskeen.jpg
Diane

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by Diane »

A touching post above this one, Brid and Mat. His grave is beautiful, Brid. His depictions of (the spiritual qualities of) the very ordinary are immensely satisfying.
The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch
Or any common sight the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.
Diane wrote:
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
"Dreeping" is an interesting word...dripping and deep?
In "Advent", the word 'dreeping' is a fusion of the words dripping and creeping which is designed to create in the mind of the reader the qualities of both words. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Kavanagh
8)
lonndubh
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

Diane wrote:His depictions of (the spiritual qualities of) the very ordinary are immensely satisfying.
indeed Diane .
As soon as we can except the nothing/ordinary as ones fate ,it becomes a richness .
lonndubh
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Location: Ireland

Re: guess the song + Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

From Failure Up

Can a man grow from the dead clod of failure
Some consoling flower
Something humble as a dandelion or a daisy,
Something to wear as a buttonhole in Heaven?
Under that flat, flat grief of defeat maybe
Hope is a seed.
Maybe this is what he was born for, this hour
Of hopelessness.
Maybe it is here he must search
In this hell of unfaith
Where no one has a purpose
Where the web of Meaning is broken threads
And one man looks at another in fear.
O God can a man find You when he lies with his face downwards
And his nose in the rubble that was his achievements?
Is the music playing behind the door of despair?
O God give us purpose
lonndubh
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

March

The trees were in suspense
Listening with an intense
Anxiety for the Word
That in the Begining stirred
The dark-branched Tree
Of Humanity.

Subjectively the dogs
Hunted the muted bogs,
The horses surpressed their neighing,
No donkey-kind was braying,
The hare and rabbit under-
Stood the cause of wonder.

The blackbird of the yew
Alone broke the two
Minutes' silence
With a new poem's violence.
A tomboy scare that drove
Faint thoughts of active love.
Diane

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by Diane »

The trees were in suspense
Listening with an intense
Anxiety for the Word
:)
lonndubh
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Location: Ireland

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

From the long narrative poem The Great Hunger

VI
Health and wealth and love he too dreamed of in May
As he sat on the railway slope and watched the children of the place
Picking up a primrose here and a daisy there -
They were picking up life's truth singly.
But he dreamt of the Absolute envased bouquet -
AIl or nothing. And it was nothing. For God is not all
In one place, complete
Till Hope comes in and takes it on his shoulder -
O Christ, that is what you have done for us:
In a crumb of bread the whole mystery is.
He read the symbol too sharply and turned
From the five simple doors of sense
To the door whose combination lock has puzzled
Philosopher and priest and common dunce.
Men build their heavens as they build their circles
Of friends. God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday -
A kiss here and a laugh again, and sometimes tears,
A pearl necklace round the neck of poverty.
He sat on the railway slope and watched the evening,
Too beautifully perfect to use,
And his three wishes were three stones too sharp to sit on,
Too hard to carve. Three frozen idols of a speechless muse.
Diane

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by Diane »

there's no mistaking Mr Kavanagh's brilliance at finding depth in common scenes, L.
lonndubh
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

Diane wrote:there's no mistaking Mr Kavanagh's brilliance at finding depth in common scenes, L.
Hi Diane
This is probably one of my favorite pieces

wrote:He read the symbol too sharply and turned
From the five simple doors of sense
To the door whose combination lock has puzzled
Philosopher and priest and common dunce.
wrote:But he dreamt of the Absolute envased bouquet
And this is like Leonards'Waiting for a miracle '
Perhaps a lesson all poets have to learn :( :(
lonndubh
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Location: Ireland

Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

In memory of my Mother

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday--
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle--'
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life--
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us -- eternally
lonndubh
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Re: Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

Post by lonndubh »

Temptation in Harvest

Now I turn
Away from the ricks, the sheds, the cabbage garden,
The stones of the street, the thrush song in the tree,
The potato-pits, the flaggers in the swamp;
From the country heart that hardly learned to harden,
From the spotlight of an old-fashioned kitchen lamp
I go to follow her who winked at me.
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