NEVER
Never say goodbye
If you don’t intend coming back
Never hail a cab
If it’s a colour that isn’t black
Never change your shirt
Just ‘cos it’s covered in grime and dirt
Never go to bed
If there’s something you left unsaid
MILKING TIME
MILKING TIME
Father always hummed at the milking
Pausing only to say ‘easy girl, easy there’
When a troublesome horse-fly struck
Sitting on his three-legged stool
His pail clamped between his thighs,
He caressed old Daisy’s belly with his head
And sometimes sank his fist into the wrist
When she lashed out
The sound of milk hitting the pail
Was like rain dancing on corrugated steel
He could hit one of those flies
At three paces with one long squirt.
Sometimes he practiced on me.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER ON A TRAIN
BRIEF ENCOUNTER ON A TRAIN
Blue-green compact
Hazel green eyes
She powdered busily
Then blinked in surprise
When I winked
Not once, but twice
The train rocked on
She powdered her nose
She looked at me slyly
But I feigned repose
She stuck out her tongue
And I winked once more
Then the train came to a stop
And she dived for the door
HISTORY LESSONS AGAIN
HISTORY LESSONS AGAIN
Ring of Kerry, Lackendaragh Fachta Finn and Gougane Barra Ollam, Piper, Beann a Ti Farmer, Fiddler and Land-Lease Viking, Norsemen and Wild Geese Erimon and Fionn Macool De Danann and No Home Rule
Clonmacnois and The Dail Men of Erin, Fianna Fail Democrats and Labour too Gombeen men, the Dublin Zoo Loonies, Moonies, Lords and Serfs Poets, Painters, Suffragettes Cowboy Pictures, Travelling Shows Ceoltas Dancing, Frightening Crows
Tyrone, Tyrconnell, Red Hugh and Owen Roe Cromwell, Robert Emmett, Dev and Strongbow Pearse, Kevin Barry, Colm Cille, Maud Gonne St Patrick, St Brigid, Mac Murrough, Wolf Tone
Aonach, Feis, Connemara Irelands Own and Hill of Tara Rock n Roll and fireside stories Sorse Eireann and Mickey Magories The Coleen Bawn, O’Donnell Abu Leprechauns and Faeries too Bloody Sunday, Black and Tans Easter Rising, Bobby Sands Oisin, Cormac, Tigernach Cashel, Cratloe and Armagh The Hills of Tullow, Conor Pass Sarsfields Ride and Dorans Ass The Croppy Boy and Ninety Eight Sassanach and Fenian blade The Clipper Carlton, Dicky Rock St Stephens Green and Glendalough
Kilmainham, Kilmichael, Kilwarden, Kinsale Dungannon, Dunmore, Enistymon, Rathkeale, Fedelm, Eithne, Aofi, Kathleen The Shamrock, the Harp, the Flute and Crubeen
Master McGrath and Brian Boru Famine, Firbolgs, the H Blocks too Ard Ri, Mountjoy, Parnell and Rynanna Step-dancing, Brian Boru, Big Tom and Setanta
Tir Na Nog, the Galway Blazers Bord Na Mona, Macs Smile razors Mummers, Druids, Unionists Catholics, Jews, Adventists Malin Head and Poitin stills Ikes and Mikes, the Book of Kells Shannon, Suir, Boyne and Nore The Gallowglass and Take The Floor
Blackleg, Wrenboy, Blackshirt, Whitethorn Whiteboy, Boycott, Blueshirt, Blackthorn Plantation, Emancipation, Emigration, Liberation O’Connell, O’Brien, O’Hanlon, One Nation Cuchullian, Rebellion, the Taylor and Ansty B Behan, O’Casey, Riverdance and Planxty Sean T, Mick Del, Sean Kelly, Glenroe James Joyce, Christy Ring, Arkle and Mick’O
IRA, BBC UVF, RTE IRA and UCC LDF and IRB ICA and ESB GAA and C of E Saints and sinners C’est la vie Everyone is you and me.
PIGS AND J JUNOR
PIGS AND J.JUNOR
This island, this septic island
Adrift in a sea of indifference
Towed along by other entities
Once fearful of its wash
Hear the battle-cry from every tower block,
Every street corner, every public bar,
Every private club
It is the cry of the wastrel, the cry of the vagabond
The thief in the night, the rapist, the pick-pocket
The whore, the low cur, the high roller, the insider,
The asset-stripper, the banker and the bounty-hunter
Ask not what I can do for my country
But what my country can do for me
You have fouled this planet with your culture
Profaned us all with your arrogance
You value dogs more highly than children
And leave old soldiers to freeze in empty rooms;
Single mothers flaunt their skin-tight jeans
And ‘gentlemen’ still peer down their long noses
Where the only good Irishman is a stupid one
Or a dead one
And the only good Black man an unemployed one
Or a pimp.
Wouldn’t you rather be a pig?
STEVIE SMITH – NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING
Not Waving but Drowning
NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
POEM by Philip Larkin
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
DYLAN THOMAS NAILS IT- AGAIN
DO NOT GO GENTLE I TO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
SINGER WITH THE BAND
BORN TO MISSS
BORN TO MISS
You see I came to everything too late
I missed the first train
I missed the last bus
I missed the sixties swinging
The Stones and The Beatles singing
I missed On The Road and Happy Days
Woodstock, Bob Dylan and the hippy craze
I missed the signals
That women give
Carnaby Street and I Want To Live
I missed double sixteen
More times than I can remember
And I missed the Lewis effigy-burning
Every bloody November.
My Writing Life 