Well, Ignacio, I must say I am puzzle by the url you gave me. I cannot go anywhere from there!! Are you sure you gave me the right one? But does your friend smell like a girl? Does he hang out watching young boys at the school yard gate? Did he shower with the men at the gym when he was eight? Then he is probably not only a homosexual, but a vicious child murderer as well. Remember, Jane warned us!!!
Perhaps you should retype your poem if you want to change a word. I know how important one word is in a poem.
Now yes, I am quite Irish for a non-Irish person, and this afternoon I am teaching my child how to make Irish soda bread to go with the corned beef and cabbage and potatoes and small onions and parsnips and carrots and turnips we are having for diner. Of course this is really an American Irish tradition rather than a native one, but I can throw everything in the pot and look like I spent the day in the kitchen and then hang out here instead, so why not?
Speaking of homosexuals, Ignacio, since it is St. Patrick's Day AND we have been discussing homosexuals here as well, I found a few poems by a woman homosexual Irish poet. The first one is really in appreciation of just a normal, safe modern life, and I think the poet is remembering what women have been subjected to during rougher times in history, so it is somewhat political. I think the last two are very sensual, and I hope everyone else likes them, also. A poem does not have to be heterosexual in order to be soft or strong or beautiful::
The Breath of History
I am not an ordinary woman.
I wake in the morning,
I have food to eat.
No one has come in the night
to steal my child, my lover.
I am not an ordinary woman.
A plum tree
blossoms outside my window,
the roses are heavy with dew.
A blackbird sits on a branch
and sings out her heart.
I am not an ordinary woman.
I live where I want
I sleep when I'm tired.
I write the words I think.
I can watch the sky
and hear the sea.
I am not an ordinary woman.
No one has offered me life
in exchange for another's.
No one has beaten me until I fall down.
No one has burnt my skin
nor poisoned my lungs.
I am not an ordinary woman.
I know where my friends live.
I have books to read.
I was taught to read.
I have clean water to drink.
I know here my lover sleeps:
she lies beside me,
I hear her breathing.
My life is not commonplace.
At night the air
is as sweet as honey-suckle
that grows along the river bank.
The curlew cries
from the marshes
far out,
high and plaintive.
I am no ordinary woman.
Everything I touch and see
is astonishing and rare--
privileged.
Come celebrate each
privileged, exceptional thing:
water, food, sleep--
the absence of pain--
a night without fear
a morning without
the return of the torturer.
A child safe,
a mother,
a lover, a sister.
Chosen work.
Our lives are not commonplace--any of us who read this.
but who knows
tomorrow or the day after . . .
I feel all about me
the breath of history--
pitiless
and ordinary.
The Gaelic Poets Warned Me
The gaelic poets warned me.
They knew you of old--
your eyes like green stones
on a river bed,
the milk white skin,
the hair raven black
and its sheen.
For centuries they sang
your praise,
but I paid no attention
or had forgotten.
Until I saw you walking naked.
By then it was too late--
my past had caught up with me.
Snared by atavistic beauty,
I fell into history.
All the poems in the English language
will not save me.
The Whiteness of Snow
The whiteness
of snow
on a branch of pine
is the whiteness
of her skin
from shoulder
to thigh.
And the sway of the branch
under its
flesh of snow,
is the song of her hips
in the weight of my hands.
All poems by Mary Dorcey |
