Ireland 3 - Sweeden 0
1 Mar 2006 ... Steve Staunton the saviour of Irish soccer, starts his reign in charge of the Republic with an impressive victory in a Wednesday night friendly in Dublin's Lansdowne Road.
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What you are reading, is Seamus Kennelly and Brendan Heaney making believe, you too can dream of being the one who flies under night heron wings, blushing above memories and cemetries holding the fuse of they who came before and make us the people we've become.
Of course, I no longer know if this blog is a good idea. I have no readers, there is no chance, it seems, of a poetry editor snapping up and selling my work, so it is not as the worlds number one writer I must dabble, but as a bundle of breathe and brilliance from the outer making the inner real. The gods without are the cause, but the location is within this skin and bone container claiming:
Self and Imagination
war and peace colliding in a fictional realm of grace
sheer gliding linguistic citizen, invisible the crown
hidden within literacy, an owner, community, calm
verbal pathway belief leads you to - ruby lip lover
unseen juganaut of faith - dreams and freedom
bouyancy saviour v Ireland, happening printed
by inner sidhe, and the vacuum a language sailor
in shadow and shade, tree like in peaceful wooden
scenes, twig witchery bog breath druidical spacer
breathes. Magi gathering beneath stadium eaves
a night the saviour appeared in a friendly. Passion
play, coyote like shyness, the diametrical opposition
in essential flux, perfect harmony of itself, yourself;
friendly being and true native spirit - fair play, phwo-
of 40 thousand witnesses coopered to it, the love...
Next game, was a 0 - 1 drubbing in May at home by poorer Czech opposition, and in the stadium, the saviour's golden one-game honeymoon, ended in bitter recriminations, in what became an unceasing wave after wave of woe for the spirit of soccer on the island.
And when the man appeared pitchside, and not making it happen by a sheer belief alone, many fans lost belief that one game had given. It was a fluke, some said, the team played so well that first frozen March spring evening, dark and bitter, but still, the unexpected result. One voice roaring, home.
The on pitch action, spoke far far louder than the saviour getting it wrong.
The greek strain in the tragedy, appeared in the next match, Hera and her locks of woe in a three tri con of pure belief the saviour was before the fall. The consensus in the stadium was, the saviour was shown up for a chancer; and prophetic doom voiced in the Sun and stars on which the fans affirmed, gave rise to the belief that it had all been a cosmic jape, at their expense, and thus: none were happy.
Slowly, the underperforming saviour became subject to a vicious campaign of bile and brutal satire, some claiming of which, he was deserving, and the professional soccer pundits, jihadic hacks and windbags practicing their dark journalism, exhaled their crushed longings and hope on this man of tender years, in a relentless torrent of begrudgery and brooha.
Thus a failed saviour, he had to be, and the talk turned to ..hey, get real and sack the turnip breathing thick git, before michael barrymore nicks his job...
However, in the hour of need, when all was lost and the saviour had took to taking long walks to ponder his next move in the intolerable hot house of highly volatile public opnion, an even greater act of supremely divine intervention occured. The random miracle everyone knew in their most secret of selves - it is clear now - and collectively held similar pictures within the immediate and central same border or dernier or some such natural tide mark of anarchy this island has -- manifest in the exterior form of events which made reality seem but a handmaiden to the saviour's Fate.
The soccer magus and saviour from Drogheda was delivered a galactic intervention needed to rescue him from the off pitch antics that stemmed from the underperforming players who he was unable to motivate. The human man behind the saviour mask, appeared; after a comatase drunk - in clear dire straits beyond the one the saviour was facing - drew a replica firearm within the saviours personal space when he was pacing the Louth shoreline in deep professional turmoil, the night before the next game, wondering what woe was to appear on the morrow in his war with the hacks.
And what did was so bizzare, it was a miracle of sorts, because at the next press conference, on the morn before that fateful August match, after the fake gun had been pulled on our saviour by an irrate - not fan; but bewildered fellow countryman with lunatic tendancies when in drink - the saviour was very upset, but his deeper spirit not only flickered, it flamed....
He, actually - couldn't care about the personal trauma, of the imitation arm in his space being wove around by an inebriated upset person, which the saviour properly copped onto sharpo, but the grief it gave his parents and family, the press intrusion had caused...
But that night in August 0 - 4 Holland at Landsdowne Road and post 1 - 0 away in Suttgard to Germany, the saviour was doomed to a long drawn out goodbye in a war of attrition with the armies of enemies ranged against him. Alas he was slowly sacraficed, for underperforming, some say, in his role as a miracle worker with shorts, shinpads and ball.
Eight fair years, honest blooms, if you ever find us
bleeding, declare by the dead generations that give
the living their claim, the pipes are laid square, gutter
spout pointing downwards, a temple of telling tales
by the door post and stories most tender, border lying
straightlines drifting to the very terminus of an image
amazing to see, the under-line current that will affirm
the island queen of memory's annointed Her leaders,
following the straight bowled knowledge from Tír
na Og, in the name of god and of the dead generations
from which we receive an aul tradition, land of eternal
youth, a mythical place existing on pages time forgot
the singular straight line, visible in a captioned image,
lives and will prove with nought but light and air,
no roman came and smashed the altars, but the native
men and women aways here. And so the transition from druid to fili and the bardic to soccer culture, was not a renty one of heart break and pain, but joyous, some say. In the dark ages, Ireland - renowned for being the beacon of light, hope peace - for peace light and hope, is nought but belief..
A four square canon of greats the rest of the globe may shake their head in bewilderment at. GB Shaw? Heaney? Doyle? And the others?
For all our faults, to give hope to others not resident here, we must do good things; be putting hope into the world.
The globe is full of men mongering doom, but none have a right to fix the boundary of another's intellect in the quest to stop our heart beating, cuisle, so declare the right of us to a belief in oursleves and control of our destiny.
None can make us believe a book is any good but our eyes alone; and of the best irish poets ever to have practiced, and who did so in the - now forgotten - bardic culture that existed for 1200 years, Gofraidh O Dalaigh is an arch ollamh, William Carleton the son of a seanachie, so read and believe a mind crossing can place de facto dictator at number one, any it wants.
gra agus siochain.
Monday, December 15, 2008
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1 comment:
Ah, the comment box is back -- hurrah hurrah . . .
Dear Des, would you please consider writing for this site an appreciation of – was it Mick Donaghue, ... like your Baraka essay? .. . I mean the man who wrote that dazzling poem about the ‘machinery of grace’ in bicycles and harpsichords that you posted for us at GU? . . . I looked and looked for other poems by him – or any information at all – and turned up nothing. . . Where did you come across him?
When I'm in low spirits, I sometimes find deep immersion in someone else's work can help. . . Don't know if this makes any sense; hope it does, at least a little.
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