Changed, as one outfaced, aware but of time chance, graceful accident and the terribbly compelling truth of a Muse alone, sean was king of camelot. Joe's second string and two patrick's, grand and great, who died on November 22 1858, at thirty five during an epidemic of cholera, one hundred and five years to the very day, that the fullest shoot on the furthest branch from Patrick in the derbhfine, was assassinated in Dallas by a foe in shade, host of shadow and hate.

Sean fitzgerald kennedy was born 94 years after a starving illiterate pair struck out, fleeing for fictional gold and going it our way. Patrick and bridget are a quarter of John Kennedy, and this fitzgerald son of fils gerald is a poet who drew the torpid light from within, and wishes to sing of sean's brother Bobby; the speech on April four - 1968 - the day of Martin's assassination.

~

Bobbies great grandfater was Patrick kennedy, head of JFK's derbhfine (four generations of one family) which produced the unofficial American political royalty; which he was an eighth responsible for creating, and patrick learnt what meagre literate skill he had in a hedge school in Wexford in the decade before the mid 19C famine in Ireland.

The 1840's were a watershed of horror of the most terrible kind the island ever knew. Fifty years after the failed 1798 rising had dealt a knelling blow to the United Irishmen of orange and green, there was a golden finality about the aul sodding dream, and a Mor Gort - great hunger of holocuast proportion, whose socio-pyschological dna is the grief of silent rising sorrow within us, descended in the black blight that turned the subsistence crop of spuds to all but mush and goo.

But two great grandparent of sean's eight island natives, carrying only the linguistic spark of ancient rann and lay - in the knack and gift for language threading to a time beyond all barrier of what is understood - connected their lucky offspring from a new continent, to this island. A place where poetic lore is naturally preached by all natives; invisibly administered and instinctivley understood, this culture and language that go together in a very rudimentary way. Where non but the natives can speak with an island accent, where no Hollywood star or non Irish actor, has ever successfully imitated it, ever. An anomoly of speech that makes the talker their own self fulfilling gaurantee of genuinely being from here. Interesting and strange, but true and straight, easy to ignore or dismiss, but for those seeking to orbit poetical spheres, a fact they cannot escape.

~

And it was against the backdrop of this horrific swirl and whirr of event and occurence occurence, that Bridget Murphy and Patrick kennedy left for Boston in 1849, escaping from an island bereft of all hope. For it was the famine that brutally collapsed their native tongue and this cultural collapse was the shortest day of heat and rock-bottom one must reach as we and one alone, and garner strength in the heavy price of understanding that the light of language that made myth flee and turn reality silent with the absent dead cries of a starving mass of bare boned humanity; is eternally frozen within us all, and remains a perma-frost of hate, until it melts in the heat of Love. In the human compassion for "others."

~

And the millions trying to die stood up and yield not their dignity beneath the yoke of their foe; did so until a collective resignation descended and the island mist of immediate and eternal sorrow enveloped our pysche as one and we alone. And this sensitivity to a state of native lore and talk in proud iron and bronze age lay, ran, sequence and way, pro-actively ignored by England as the "economic" crisis saw the natives starve, is what drives and guides my hand today, here for the reader. To reverse the notion of Greatness for all those in the immediate sphere of britonnic influence and address the absent shades who uttered:

"Sure they have only hiberno-english anyway."

The imperial landowners, absent on vast estates saw not fellow humans, but a strange laughable blundering lot, principally becasue they spoke not English; William Carleton being the first native to out the inner melody in print, briefly wrote propaganda to further the lie of oaf and natural fool in inescapable blundering, until his mind became its own and the true stories flowed from his pen; so that now his tales - written by the son of a real Tyrone senachie (lore-man) - only garner greater praise as the harrow of time and true literacy plays out.

And when the boat of this island pair of kennedys came in, Pat and bride began enacting what shenaningans of making their dream occured in the music of their life then and there, as irish-speaking immigrants in America, with amergin and Cuhullain singing the inner music happening within for us. We who seek and find true,the simple craft that comes after great learning. And i would like to take this opportunity of editing an impromptu, extemporised address to a crowd in Indianapolis the day Martin Luther King died, when Bobby Francis Kennedy confessed, he had not the Answerer; for cuhullain perhaps can execute peace, but this is a homage to the dead and other "theres," absent and wishing only to find francis kennedy speaking of love, off the cuff, in a rare gift of immense poetical gravitas:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

"..Talk..for a minute..this evening,
because..some very sad news..
Could you lower those signs, please?
..sad news for all..fellow citizens,
..people who love peace..the world;
..Martin Luther King..shot..in
Memphis, tennessee..dedicated his
..life to love ..justice..human cause..effort..
And on this difficult day for the United
States..perhaps it is well to ask what..
nation ..what direction we want to move in.

For those of you, considering, it is
..evident..there were white people ..filled
with bitterness, and with hatred,
..A desire for revenge. So..ask..tonight
..return..say a prayer for the family
-- Yeah, it's true -- but more important
..say a prayer for our own country,
..Which all of us love -- understanding
..compassion.. can do the country good
In difficult times. We've had a difficult ..past
..will have a difficult time in the future.

It is not the end of violence;..the end
of lawlessness;..disorder..the majority
Of people in this vast..country..live together,
..improve the quality of life..justice ..all
Human beings that abide by peace in ..our land
let's dedicate ourselves to what a Greek poet
.. Many years ago:

..tame the savageness of man and make gentle
the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say
a prayer for our country and for our people.
Thank you very much.

..move in that direction as a country,
In greater polarization..filled with hatred toward
one another. Or we can make an effort,
As Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to
comprehend, and replace that violence,
That stain of bloodshed that has spread across
our land, with an effort to understand,
Compassion, and love.

For those..tempted to fill with -- be filled
with hatred and mistrust of the injustice
Of such an act, against.. people, I would only
Say that I..feel in my own heart the same kind
of feeling. I had a member of my family killed,
..by a white man. But we have to make an effort
In the United States. We have to make an effort
to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond
These rather difficult times. My favorite poem,
my -- my favorite poet ..he once wrote:

Even in..pain which cannot forget ..drop by drop
upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against
our will, comes wisdom
Through the..grace of" good...

"What we need in the United States is not division;
what we need in the United States is not hatred;
What we need ..is not violence and lawlessness,
but..love, and wisdom..compassion ..one another..
A feeling of justice toward those who still suffer
within our country, whether they be white or..black."

~

I will arise topday by the strenght of heaven
swiftness of wind, radience of rock
Firmness and stability of Bobby F Fitzgerald fili.

~

On April four, a short time after leaving the airport, after deciding to go ahead with a pre-arranged address to a crowd in Indianapolis, unaware Martin Luther King, the prince and prophet of non violence, had been slain by a fool and history revealed - as much as one beleif can hope to find when drawing parallels of fitzgereldean zero, the eight straight resident sidhe within the person one wishes to be, a sidhe king or thrall, slave or freeman - that all have a tune to carry and air to flee and return as wind blown fawn grey, lost in a liminal space where sidhe flit and play, come the thirty first night; Samhain eve.