extract from Patrick Kavanagh’s long poem THE GREAT HUNGER
O he loved his mother
Above all others
O he loved his ploughs
And he loved his cows
And his happiest dream
Was to clean his arse
With perennial grass
On the back of some summer stream:
To smoke his pipe
In a sheltered gripe
In the middle of July.
His face in a mist
His two stones in his fist
And an impotent worm on his thigh
But his passion became a plague
For he grew feeble bringing the vague
Women of his mind to lust-nearness,
Once a week at least flesh must make an
Appearance.
So Maguire got tired
Of the no-target gun fired
And returned to his headland of carrots and cabbage
To the fields once again
Where eunuchs can be men
And life is more lousy than savage.
The Great Hunger isn’t about the Famine. It’s about the hunger for, love, food, land, life…everything. But mostly it’s about the hunger for sex…
My Writing Life 
Phew! Strong stuff isn’t it? He’s caught it well b
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Yes, he has, John. A brilliant poem when read in its entirety. It was down to John Betjeman that it got published initially. He said it was one of the finest poems he had ever read and championed its publication. It was never officially banned in Ireland, though the police went round removing it from bookshops, and the church denounced it from the pulpit.
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