You read strangely wound letters in the
noble

dead silence of a deep dumb worth we
wrote

in pulsations of faith and flash'd doubts
dwelling

where each of the letters had scriven well
those

leaves that kept an alphabet mess defiantly
a tree

of unbroken branches the hidden tongue
spoke

strange in words silently: the chroi - love
vapour

defying the cry and defining our changed
bark

the cow bard whirring in a thought snare
otherworldly

words keenly sought along the track to a
source

of suggestive force you made words with
enobling

letters wound in the line all seek as one

and you read strangely

~

The day one often remembers, when from sleep
we first awoke and found ourselves reposed
under a shade of flowers, wondering if here
a distant murmuring sound of water composed
our soul-touched star reflecting on a moonlit
sea: nothing hard or rough but sweet beneath
the tranquil sky; Manannán mac Lír, foaming
horse-water deity riding his plain,
the ancient mist of mythical man, four square
his white wave hoof shod wet in sodden feet
of sand and sea grain counting many
the snow flake lit upon a shore line during
winter storms our voyage sets out to overcome,
galloping free from that we doze out through,
to the star reflecting on a moonlit sea.
~
Wet deity in a drop of meadow dew in May

our inner spring of time the grass-stone
hail-blade tramples under horses' hoof:
Manannán mac Lír, son of the seas' reflection
in tranquil lunar moonlight, the reversing

words that roar clear, rowing to a stone
the Land of Women crying for love sight,
you wash in a hundred sounds of music sung
- Manannán - beneath a foaming sky water,
horse of four hooves wave-shod, trodden
white sea of grain count and sand flake,
lined in the hoof-light: Manannán mac Lír
stir the sea like it is your blood.
~
Bring a silver apple branch from Emhain's
far island, in an ocean to the west of us
Manannán horses circle, fair Son of Lír;
delight of a plain eye host of chariot racing
on the white silver steed South beyond
Imagination, blossoming bird in tree lore
of common delight: gently spell a shining
voice, colour the cloud-music sung in tir
na og and work where we got drunk and stayed
that way: the night waking soundless
at four
soundless
at three
two
soundless
at
one
and
aquamairne orb of lunar-lit will; be Manannán mac Lír
stir
time's curtain winding left round a land
of purple leaf-lit myth
edge connecting tree light lovers unloved and empty
in te grass of heaven
laid smooth below a green bank,
look

into the clear smooth lake that seems
soul-bent sky within a shape
passing among us
and them
sometimes
wanting to speak and not speak of sidhe dreams
vanished
into their nut-reality resting in our demense
now;
speak the unspeakable
impase.
~
No keening or treachery here, eternity
the familiar tilled land of music striking
all ear without death grief sickness: sorrow
or weakness, but faith that is a sign
of Emhain's uncommon wonder, in silver wet
rain drops caressing the turtle shell,

pure ocean cliff in a warm sunrise hosting
weather-sport racing over eternal eastern
plains where the game of death and ebbing
tide do not come coloured in an overcoming
wave to crush the stór and grá in our still
well, silver blood, sometimes lighting
an army of three times fifty far off islands
beyond imagination
we sometimes
it happens
impose impossible odds on
the siege-bound hung in a carving behind
the mask of relief returning goodness
raked from hell tower hall razed counter
when walking as the well sprite your water
lacquers gold, our daemon Boann decorated
sympathetically: head obverse and swollen

strain of Neith's tale and the heads Dementer
demand we deliver in an acorn brooch
measured in patterned wetness, sometimes
blossoming under our window,
wood and hidden hill of letters all decaying
spelling
as it happens, good friend,
sometimes
when it happens
you
the friend in a friendship passed and gone
in the day spent lost among them at a holy well.

. in the nemetons of cyberville, where various Mystery rites of the very many Mysteries celebrating life, are practiced by lovers of wisdom too numerous to fully list here, the sage Pythagoras of Samos, occupies a unique position.

His intellect was exercised throughout his life and is credited for bringing ancient practical solar knowledge to greece; not only from Egypt, where he studied for 22 years, initially gaining admittance to the nemeton at Diospolis after a forty day fast; but Persia, after the king of Persia, Cambyses II, invaded Egypt in 525BC and Pythagoras, relocated to Babylon and became his prisoner.

Our ancient sage, already schooled to Ard Ollamh level in the Egyptian Mysteries, from which the theorem commonly bearing his name was first committed to print, 12-1500 years before in 2000–1786 BC, outfaced reality by effortlessly adapting into taking full advantage of his new situation and spent his 12 years in Babylon becoming adept in the Chaldean Mysteries, initiated by Magi who taught this already very learned man to refine his practice of ancient solar knowledge and become first among principles in the ancient greek canon, on which our globally-european centric culture under-thrumbs its otherworldly flame, and the axiomatic elevation of Pythagoras to a primary serious spirit of the real multi-knowledge-template disciplining the full of his mind in purring prayer to self via mathmatical route, rote and root to the most ancient of mysteries i am unable to speak of due to contractual obligations with macmillan, ian macmillan, Don Patterson's Fiona Sampson and shadow-mask for Aristotle of course.

Ay oop, its ian, the po-mo tome maestro of long winded dot to dot address and cat sat on the mat of light settled in an argument between the Pythagoras that got turned away from the Egyptian Schools for presenting his credentials of a wise vessel of flesh and blood, as an unfasted geek with a gift for being clever in the head alone and the Pythagoras after his forty day fast entry exam who had learned the first principle of poetry Amergin articulates in the Cauldron of Poesy piece:

"Where is the root of poetry in a person; in the body or in the soul?"

Prior to his entry into the ancient wisdom grove where knowledge and religion were indivisibly bound, Pythagoras thought at 20, when he first set forth to Egypt after spending his earliest intellectual awakening and training years on Samos, studying under the philosopher Pherekydes and later, immmediately prior to his arrival in the earliest home of solar knowledge which built pyramids, two years studying math and astronomy in Miletus with Thales, and his pupil Anaximander, Pythagoras was not allowed in because all neophytes into the mystery rites had to undergo a 40 day fast, which our protagonist could not see the logic of, dismissing the basis of the druidic code with a contemptuous:

"I have come for knowledge, not any sort of discipline."

At that age, that talent, he was like Milton, a clever young man, but one who had not learned the most fundamental physical lesson philosophy offers the prospective bore: and which Amergin poses and answers in such a way as to suggest he too was the keeper of an ancient mathematically based musical code, of which Pythagoras is the most well known example of in the European tradition. And Amergin responds to the rhetorical question posed by an omnipotent narrator who does not intrude and remaining outside of the piece, our anonymous authorial voice speaking for the 7C caste of filidh which had displaced, after an executive cull, the swollen druidic bunch of the 5C, when Ionian culdean Columcille from Derry, expertly handled the, then very sensitive issue which affected the whole of Fodhla.

A surfeit of pre-literate pagan holy men practicing rites we know next to nothing of, but which were based on a practical solar knowledge which gaelic culture had from it's earliest dawn. We need only look at the Palace of the Boyne, home of Dagda and later his son Ogma, who won it in a quibble, a form of words cutely concocted which weight in favour of the magician doing the diddling out of; to apprehend Newgrange passage mound in it's thoroughly bewitching majestic stone self understated grace; this artifice of rock living as it did when first built 5000 year back, before the theorem of Pythagoras had first been written on the codex by the first pyramid builders, is a sight worthy of dream proven before one's eyes.

In a bend of the Boyne a native code and ancient template for initiate adepts to concot their poetic with, raise the roof still weather proof 5000 years later with this knowledge of migrating souls in the tetra dimensional stance of morality, four square and all the combinations squared, circled light in the whole question:

What is Poetry?

And so when we ask where the seat over the root of the ancient knowledge lies, Amergin's flawless poem cryptically addresses this, by logically surmising the options and returning what is in effect, silence, as it does not answer in an either or state, but one in which a sense of the multi-communicational, the wisdom of axiomatic principles, the inner knowing sense of what befits and the well of segais really, the home within we all have and, to the inheritors of the mystic mumbo jumbo mobs we spectacularly fail to drone on like, communicating adept via a logical mathematical rail and rule whose system is but the one motif spiraling shadows above and behind the mask Pythagoras spoke of in riddles for the initiated and so after his fast, spake thus:

"You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life.

Through Vibration comes Motion" -

Pythagoras

"They say it is in the soul, for the body does nothing without the soul." -

Amergin

"Through Motion comes Color" -

Pythagoras

Others say it is in the body where the arts are learned, passed through the bodies of our ancestors."


Through Color comes Tone" -


It is said by practicing artists, that the "seat of what remains over the root of poetry; and the good knowledge in every person's ancestry comes not into everyone, but comes into every other person."

This means only every other person will inherit the poetry gene, which is 50%. work it out..riddle me this:

is poetry work@home in verbal placements Pythagoras asked us to consider in the riddle:

"step not over a balance" - do not be greedy

A

"What then is the root of poetry and every other wisdom?"

P

PA - reversing the math, geometry axiom, the dimension we do not see now we are fully hypnotised and at mercy of the face on TV telling us what to believe, we confused asking, what is it, making form, this thing called verse - turning - in latin, referring to the turnings of a neatly ploughed field. poetry wrought in quantities of a sound poetic of four measures..Ogma, the celtic god of poetry, has its etymological root in ogmius, a farming deity whose name also lent itself to the turning of Gaulish fields, in that invisible empire, whose silence is at the heart of what Pyhthagoras tried to get across as being the one which only the studious application of one's mind to the existing templates of morality we engineer to assist in the cause of our enobling, seeking one's potential in the most directly mathmatical metrical route of measuring what it is we create with body, soul and intellect, a tripartite dimension and really, beware of going down to the woods in barnsley tonight, for your in for a big surprise, if you go dogging in s yorkshire tonight, you may encounter a bespectacled bard making crazee guy progs man, of ian dogging for the verb..

A O U E I

The original alphabet, which Graves concocts his ultimately highly flawed sprawling White Goddess tome with; is called Ogam.

It is named after the Tuatha De Dannan (people of the goddess Danu) god Ogma, son of Dagda, the chief deity of this mythological race, who were the sixth and penultimate race of supernatural beings to "take" the island as documented in the Lebor Gabála Érenn - The Book of the Takings of Ireland.

These were only in possession of the island for 300 years or so, before the final takers, the Milesians, who the founding bardic poet, Amergin, was the druid of, came and took it from them and banished the Tuatha De Dannan to beneath the hills and into the Sidhe mounds (phonetic 'shee'), where they became the sidhe or faeries of folklore.

This is an alphabet of originally 20 and later, post 8C twenty five letters, unique to Brythonic (now welsh) and Gaelic culture.

The alphabet was divided into four families or aicmes, of five letters, and each aicme took the name of it's first letter, and all the letters related to various trees. This is why it is called the tree alphabet. Ireland at the time of its invention was covered in trees. The sequence of this alphabet is:

B L F S N - H D T C Q - M G Ng Z R - A O U E I

You will notice that this is not in the roman order, and by analysing the arrangement we can discover the mathmatical formula the druids came up with to create ogam.
If we lay out the letters in their roman order we get 18 and the sounds V, pronounced as an F and Ng, were then tacked onto the end, so:

A B C D E G H I L M N O Q R S T U Z F Ng

What they did was separate out the vowels and group them into broad and slender, in the order:

A O U E I - this is the fourth and final sequence in the ogam alphabet and is called Aicme Ailme (original meaning of ailme unknown).

We then take out the early Irish names for the numerals one to five: H (huath) D (da) T (tri) C (cethair) Q (quic)

H D T C Q - this is the second family called: Aicme hÚatha (original meaning unknown)
This leaves us ten letters:

B G L M N R S Z F Ng

From this group we take every second letter, beginning with the B, giving us:

B L N S F - the first family: aicme beith/birch

The five letters left: G M R Z Ng, are then re-ordered, beginning with M, the letter in the middle at position 10 in the original group of twenty, and create the sequence working backwards.
This gives us the third family, aicme Muin (neck):

M G NG Z R

~

The three consonantal aicme/sets of letters, are then arranged in alphabetical order, the first letter in each group dictating where the aicme is placed, so aicme beith B goes first, then aicme hÚatha H, second, aicme muin M third and the vowels to end it. Thus giving the final order

B L N S F - H D T C Q - M G NG Z R - A O U E I

This cryptographic process seems perfectly in keeping with the Bardic love of mystery and concealment.

~

Each letter in the four aicme, has three kennings associated with them, preserved in three Bríatharogaim (word-ogam) lists, dating to the Old Irish period 5-7C, which can be viewed here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%ADatharogam

goD

Parisa is a blog buddy whose enthusiasm for the Mossbawn magus, seamus Heaney, i share as he is simply the best around, in person and print. At any time there is usually one about the place setting the tempo, and he who needs no introduction or naming - nameless sidhe of Kavanagh and yeats - one who lives it as, i think is fair to suggest, the one most likely to garner the appellation of contemporary Bard from across the board away from his Home here.

However on home turf, many will not concur with what others elsewhere accept unquestioningly; that this man alone is bog-touched by Ogma and Erc, Amergin and the unknown homeric work, the Eternal:

"unity of being"

an anonymous concept yeats dreamed up in the socio-psychic blueprint he wrote for himself as point and guider, universal coda invoking craic with noght but his Imagination. Like Hopkins did with the "inscape" system; much less well known, though just as relevant a Poetic, to him as in an audience the size of Yeats; heaney a class act who broke the mould, and in my opinion, set it straighter than ever it was before. For the first time we had an educated "native" irish voice in the collective bog-sense yeats could never share as heaney does, nor elucidate; because it is that of a class yeats went on about in his own personal mumbo-jumbo to self, the "peasant".

Heaney is the rarest and first of breeds, the real thing, poet teacher sourced in the one incontrovertible source of a pure strain in the native appearance. Heaney's face itself the contributing guarantee of his poetic pass to a singular celtic world yeats was never part of; being the fruit of planter stock who only had a few generations to invent himself with. Heaney, you can tell by the look of him, his people have been on this island far longer than the souls who contributed to silly willy's mob of aristocracy counterpointing the Dream ireland Heaney's immesne gift equals and, imho, surpasses, certainly in the critical prose i found/find practical help with, as colleague of he who needs no naming. Mr famous points out in his essay on Yeats, first "native" english writing bard who reconnected in the modern era and wrote, for the first time, an English language poetry which set out a stall so exotic and strange to, what until then had been the native English speaking palette; back then, in the crossover of centuries of era, time whose tableaux of spirits sing, included Ez Pound, who sought Bill out with a pathological fervor bordering on the tedius, perfectly poetic and True to ez in 1912 when he and Will fenced in Stone Cottage oxford, and ez was amanuensis after acknowledging WB the real Butler being not quite the God some think as know not Silly willy as well as maude gonne did, and who all the rest of the craking gang back then when everyone was at it, being mystic.

As one career sazzy carol rumens sagely informs us, our classical learning worlds of poetic outcome are a billion zillion light years distant from what the kids jangle on in pm and text today and attemot not to pass as the contemporary Poetic; particularly in the potential future star of all things Prophetic in words maybe, i dunno, but i do suppose what it is, is that he who shall remain nameless, is the first native poet who beat the Bloomsbury bores at their own game on his terms and proves himself right as he writes earning a rhyme tu-whitt tu-wooing in the woods searching for clues to who he is armed only with a pen and scholarly scrupulousness practiced since he began as the eldest of nine from Mossbawn farm, Castledawson, Anahorish and borders in tongues of order and governance so finely nuanced only the full erudition an innate poet transliterates in Form, style and all sorts of important self-made rules of engagement with this mystic Art some purport to practice, with varying degrees of success and I imagine at first when he who shall remain nameless in the Group kicked it all off with Longley, Mahon and co up the North, first shairng their Dream in an expert metricist mob of young academic Irishmen, aided by perhaps one of the finest technical critters, Philip Hobsbaum; whose prose proves he knows his feet i think; and his protege's prose, when i first read it, is unsurpassed by any other critical voice his peers have practiced writing in.

He is at number one in prose, poetry and person. There can be only one and it is him, on top with the full four cycles memorised i bet, washing through the troubles he found his way of speaking through in tounges of order governing his notion of selfhood as that younger man, the first "native" one whose Unity of Being yeats banged on about but failed to articulate in print in the way heaney so effortlessly achieves. Heaney's Dream has risen as far and lit as bright Yeats, and with much less shiny song and dance of "moi" than Yeats goes in for.

Yeats always wanted and got it all and heaney too perhaps, but in connection to a Dream they shared as the two poets - one born only months after the other left in bleakest winter on the cusp of war he predicted perhaps as the crawling beast of diabolical abode - with Kavanagh in the trinity just on his way into a Palace Bar and the few disastrously short sojourns, not only to his second home of Fleet Street in Dublin where the Palace Bar still dominates for all writers in Dublin practicing today who are serious about Poetry; but also as contender in one across the water in London, whose mystic spirit yeats will was bark and bole with AE; back in the day they were doing 24 hour a day visionary things; AE - Yeats's personal mystic, Kavanagh a long lean middle path, had to wait for the bay sweater, till the Bell recognition of his greatness came close to a posthumous conferral of a shadowy laurel appellation Kanavanagh at least crowned himself with, and many others i suspect - if not all or most at least perhaps, have in their mind's eye as the sheer live act of pure poetic class barrier one erects, be it bardic or not, sufi or less cerebral.

Heaney tells an interesting tale in his immediate post Nobel period, on a TV show in America; to an efficient male honoring yer man as the undisputed king of Poetry almost, certainly he was riding at the highest point and effectively got the Bay Crown, and in reply to a question asked of him, about when did he start thinking of himself as a poet; he said this event happened as he enrolled his son at primary school in wicklow, when he was knocking forty, and where he had gone to write verse that was having a go at doing its own bog-won thing away from his county omphalos, Derry forst and last, in a republic, as the woodkern thinking of what term to instruct a headmaster filling his sons details in register.

What appellation his own Self used in relation to his person as both thinker and flesh, and mr heaney was thinking along the lines of stating he was a writer or college professor, but the man recording the event put fili (which in English translates as "poet") without asking him what he did for a do; and from that moment on Heaney decided he'd been bestowed an appellation only colleagues have the power to collectively confer on one, and thus is a reason Heaney is the name most non pro's know and agree on as the constant one real thing; poet, because he is the real thing, Sweeney astray inhabiting a myth of his own mind first and last, proving it in the decades spent being himself as a reputation of number one; in at the top and good grew up around him as he worked in verse here and there, when insanity surrounded his peers of the Imagination, he held firm and spoke fair in a body and collection of verse which brought the Dream and unity of being closer to the silence and stay apart one killer barb from mandy motion delivers - not - in a green passport and non-toast to M's chimera of Queen fictional others used in their effort to co-opt him in to the status quo of Great british nomenclature back then, topic of chat in deepest seventies UK lore, as he toiled here feeling the ace none ask to see, as the truth just is, that he is ace itself, his person and Mind in physical event, life written by none but the eldest of nine children two ordinary country people from Derry birthed, who got by on learning as the first of a wave or generation who were afforded the prize of education.

I myself understand this need to be the first with a real chance, where others do not deny one's basic right to belong to an Irish state of mind and not some cod con neo stazi attempt of the non thinking britz who say we cannot be ourselves, You are the mirage alive in Britain, ireland mate..you wha? do as we the State alone instructs one to tell or one will not be included in our mob of headhunting magi looking for the real Irish poets and the gang. So what of it? Yes, certainly there are many excellent poets here who work well when left alone to: "transform into sow, mare, bitch, vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid, or loathsome hag" as we are told by david the Phoenician expert who is a phonetic mist itself to be fair to another blog pal, misharialadwani, here on the rock of C theories and connections made, thank you very much..

Nollaig shona duit.

For next year. For this, happy St Stephen's Day.

I hope you had an enjoyable dinner on the big day, and i want to say, thank you very much to all here who contribute to making this mirror of literacy reflect successfully since August 1, Lughansa, end of summer.

And now, just passed the threshold of midwinter, darkening days lightening up and the first wave of fight and craic gone, recorded in epic battles between our verbal protagonists doing it for positions taken and took; played out in the arena of ID and ego with the intensity all committed campaigners find leads to eloquent voices, the early hard work is done and humanity has a chance of routing through here in 2008 to drive up parity between bloggers; now at an all time high; the elevated address of one way traffic hacking detached no longer, but slipping fast in a two way communication we alone have, each singular one of us within i, You it, us and them; one and Dr Strange love in the cleera wave coming home to us, cuchulainn's ice-kept Answerer culling the crud, copping on to sorrow in the acoustic proof between faltering syllables singing happy christmas, love and peace in the new year ahead of us, please be to God.

And if anyone's on a downer, talk here, say owt yer wunt, get it off your chest and reverse the vibe by writing out the sorrow for happiness to come.

I had a low key quiet day, waking in the attic to brilliant sunshine, feeling at peace. Yesterday I got a puncture at 4pm, just i was on the way to the supermarket to buy food, which scuppered my plans for cycling to my sisters the following day; but luckily, with help from a friend, i managed to secure a repair kit and managed to be on the road by 2.30pm.

By this time it had clouded over, an undecided squall coming in, the threaten and retreat of a light nasty wind taunting beneath a pearl grey sky of low cloud dispensing random spits and pulses of rain; proof of which was left in at least two of the distinct geometrical rain symbols i witnessed as i slogged, unfit under the chaos, en route yo my sisters house for dinner, seven miles distant via a curving path along the shoreline of Dublin Bay.

As i rounded the immediate corner from the seven bedroom townhouse whose attic is mine, i was struck by an almost perfectly formed four by eight patch of rain water, as though someone had taken great care to create it. Of course it was but a chance fall from heaven, and as i cycled into the city, i noticed another rectangle, its wing-brushed perimeter of sheer random art Creation left in almost impossible odds; eerie in a spiritually comforting way.

And at Christchurch, a wet patch in the perfect shape of Jesus's face..ha ha, naah, but another distinct rectangular deposit of water, the surrounding pavement, wind-dry, a fluke displaying the order of rhyme and reason for here being here.

And all the way on out from the city up to Sutton along the coastal cycle path, a sustained downpour hovered on the brink, and burst into a 40 minute storm the minute i went indoors.

I took my place at the table and began stuffing my gob wondering at the coincidence of these two symbols and one event, gifting faith in poetry if nothing else, and when i left a few hours later, the stars were out again, me in my imagination a fili doing psychic battle with the elemental material concern above, which the gods could tip anytime on my noggin.

Then, i weft off and met the friend whose compassion saved my Christmas with a rubber and glue innertube fix yesterday, and who came round for a few hours this evening for food and boring company, and after seeing them safely home and saying au revoir, am now ready to snooze...

But in the meantime, what have you been up to this day? Any tears and tantrums, superb prezzies, crap gifts, rubbish jokes, granda arrested for telling the kids the truth about father christmas, what's on telly, inside your mind, God or no god, deal it here..

grá agus síocháin.

BAD LADS

I met her three weeks ago in Delaney's in town. It was Friday night. She was with her sister. I'd just pulled a nice little number with Grebo. We'd had it away with five large off some old dear we'd done a bit of tarmacing for. It was a close thing though. We had to take her down the bank and loiter around outside. She was as good as gold mind, came up with the dough no problem. The son in law collared us just as she'd handed it over, but he knew there was no chance of getting it back. I'll give him his due. He did try, a bit anyway, just enough so he'd be able to tell the daughter he did his best. He said he was going to go to the cops, but I just laughed at him.

"What for dickhead? Tarmacing against the law now is it?"

"You know what for," he says, "ripping pensioners off is."

I told him to fuck off before he got a smack, but he obviously felt he had to put up a show for the mother in law. He tried to get his hand in my pocket. I swear to god. Absolutely no respect at all. I had every right to deck him there and then, but I don't really like confrontation so I left it.

"Proud of yourself are you? Two grown men preying on the elderly."

Well, that did it. I'm a tolerant man. I don't go round hitting people unprovoked, so I gave him a tap. Just a light slap really, nothing serious.

"Look, fuck off, before you get hurt. I could have you for slander. We did a bit of work and got paid, so go home and stop giving it the John Wayne."

I felt sorry for the old dear though, having to watch the fella embarrass himself like that, but he knew the score.

"Come on dear," she said, "lets go home."

To tell you the truth, I don't think she was all there. Probably going a bit senile. She wasn't bothered about the dough. At least she didn't say anything if she was, and that's what's important isn't it. It's not like he was shelling out. He was only thinking of himself anyway. At least we did a bit of graft for it. He was probably after tapping her for a few grand himself. Conning himself that he'd pay her back and then just hang on till she snuffs it. Selfish git.

We had a right laugh about it on the drive home, him going to the missus with a thick lip.

"They won't be going down the bingo tonight," I said.

Grebo went a bit quiet then, as if he was thinking that we might have been a bit harsh on them. He's only a kid really, still listening to his Mam. She goes the church a lot. Very religious Grebo's old dear. Likes to think that her hearts in the right place. That's alright, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking her for it, but she shouldn't try and tell her lad what he can and can't do. To be honest I don't think she knows too much about what he gets up to. She must know a bit, but I imagine she probably just ignores it, blocks it out and says a few prayers for him. But as I say, he's only a kid and still a bit soft with his emotions. I told him:

"Grebo lad, you've got two and a half grand in your arse pocket. What's more important, that or some old dear whose only going to leave it to the grandkids. She can't have long left anyway lad. It's not like we robbed her."

She knew what she was doing, which she did. We didn't point a gun to her head. Grebo's a sensible lad though and he could see the logic in what I was saying.

Anyway, we go out into town to celebrate. Get a bit of beak, a few pills and go splashing around for some beaver. We started off in Yates's on the Aussie whites. A few lines in the bog and then we're ready to move on about 11.30pm. As we're leaving I bump into Toby and tell him about the job next week.

Grebo's lined up another widow in some posh little village in Cheshire. A nice little touch by the looks of it. She's tucked away in a secluded bungalow. The husband's only been dead a couple of months and her heads in bits. Perfect. Say what you want about Grebo, but he's got a fantastic nose on him for sniffing out the cash. He's got youth on his side see. That's why he's so useful. The old dears take one look at his mug and get all misty eyed, like they're remembering their sons or dead husbands.

We've got a polished little double act going. Good cop bad cop routine. Grebo softens them up, gets them to spill the beans about the savings and what not and then I come in as the heavy hitter after they've signed up. Grebo tells them he's just the guy who does the work, hooks them as it were. He keeps the price a bit vague, but we never lie to them. Never tell them that they're getting it cheap. He gets them to sign a piece of paper. Standard issue document we knocked up off the computer.

It doesn't mean anything. It's not a contract or anything like that, just something that they sign. It gets them in a right flap though. For some reason people think that if they put their name on a bit of paper then it's serious, like they've sold their soul to the devil. As soon as we've done the work I go along suited and booted. They see me pull up in the Merc. A big bloke, shaven head, a bit mean looking and then just hand over the moolah no problem.

You get the odd one who tries to get away without paying, but if the worst comes to the worst I just get on the blower to Toby. Not many people say no to him. He's a nice bloke, don't get me wrong. Do anything for anyone, but he does have an air about him. I suppose it's the bent nose that does it, but as I say, he'd give you the shirt off his back. Ruthless in business, but then, you've got to be in our line of work otherwise you'd have every two bit wide boy trying it on.

Anyway, I told Toby about the job and we gets down Delaney's for the back bar disco. We move in on Janice and her sister, buy them both a drink, give them a few lines and bingo, we're on for going back to the sisters for afters. Some birds love the bad lads. I don't know what it is, but a lot of women, and all ages mind you, they want someone who's a bit naughty and when they see me coming they know what to expect. I don't arse about, giving them all the bullshit that your straight goers go for. I'm just myself with them. I never lie to them and never say I'm going to do something and not do it. I'm no saint, by any stretch of the imagination, but then again I'm no wimp either and girls like Janice, well, that's what they go for.

The sister wasn't my type though. Stuck up. Thinks her shit doesn't stink. Perfect for Grebo mind. A good-looking lad like him gets the pick of the women. We toyed with the idea of getting them all ladled up on the sniff and trying for some group action going, but Grebo didn't want to blow it with the sister. Anyway, it was getting late and we couldn't have been sure of finding any spares, not at that time of night. All the half decent ones have been pulled late on and it's only the boots left. I've got quit high standards, even if I say so myself, and Janice looked as it she'd do a good turn, so we decided to play safe and keep it decent.

Janice told me she had a couple of kids once we were in the taxi. I don't usually go for the single mums, but at that time of night after a few beers and Persians it's not really too much of a sticking point. Not that I minded. I love kids. I've got a few of my own, so I know the score on that front, but ideally you don't want to be having too much to do with other fella's sprogs and anyway, to tell the truth, I only thought it would be a one night job. Grebo was chewing the face of the sister all the way back, having a right old time. Janice was doing a bit of talking, telling me what a wanker the ex was. Usual sort of stuff really.

Feels like i'm fighting tyson, yeah he heeh, wo ho whay.

Only in the sink of doings that is doorty dub can one such as i remain unmolested by the armies of sickos and psycho scum, scuzzed out of the firing line like a drop deed D4 doc of possession, oudle dye diddle doh wo whah so say what mister mammon will you be gluttonous in the fray of feast and...argh, can you tell love of bells and whistles when the jolliy dublin mob of begrudgers and die-hard transvestites toggling along without toga or wrap; yo lo ray me so far laah, wharra yers onaboot in the moment of whispering; doubt it was, was it deceitful, fruitful barren and without incident listless lover laden with mischief we'll ne'er be a mountain of laughing ladies if this state remained, elsewhere, elusive elucidate and remain stalwart overboard manly it is, sink nea never no more...?

Dewars

Follow me down to a rock far away, far rock
away, golden bard singing in strings loaded
with karma, naming the street an ocean of lovers
and night-choir whispering a turnpike turning
black coffee to fine gasoline rain. Clothing two
moon-watchers touching the road-finger,
counting the roadkill, uncertainly tipped to follow
us down to a rock far away; who star in the air
above a changing bay, in acid filled lullabyes
painting a rainbow on every guitar
in the neighbourhood's brownstone.

Fair is the saturnalian rock far away,
turning each hand to write our graffiti
like secret barstool rats,
understanding our home place is under
the subway track, where we walk
with each other carrying vowels
following you down to sidhe streets
far away from the consecrated rock.

Gun-city waiting for a train of love songs
and good will mixing, vote what is left
of the the dew, seek to kiss it today
in Far Rockaway, Far Rockaway.

~

I've run out of research. The last three years since leaving university, I have been an independant scholar, not through choice you understand. My initial post-grad wish was to get on the Poetry MA at the Seamus Heaney poetry school in Queens University Belfast.

It cost £10,000 or something equally out of my budget, with a very small chance of a scholarship, and i applied just before i left the grove for, what i hoped, but half knew would not be, only the summer of 2004. My other choice was to do the writing MA in Galway University, but that, alas, was also a dream too far.

My exit velocity from college had enough momentum to bowl me, along with a bicycle and two panniers containing all my worldly goods, onto the now defunct Liverpool-Dublin fast ferry, having decided that i would get to research the history of poetry in Ireland and try my hand at writing it in on the island, by hook or by crook. My rival bores waffle on about the homeward tug of the poetic instinct, and i had it bad. To return to the land of my mother and father and all the ghosts who made me from the time of Cúchulainn and the Connachta, was the only sensible option for a man with a three-year writing habit approaching middle age.

I alighted at the North wall and cycled along the coastal path to my sister’s house in Baldoyle: a beachhead from where to launch my assault upon the literary citadel of Dublin, to sparkle or burn in urban Ireland’s poetry flame HQ, and after a few days fixed myself up in the main homeless hostel in the city centre, run by the Iveagh Trust, and very well run i might add.

I immediately threw myself into writing and reciting, and instinctively felt i had slipped into the place i should be in, as everything seemed to go right for me here, and more by accident than design. I have always been a high grade spacer, away with the clouds and here, this thinking is not out of place or abnormal as it was in England, i understand now because of the huge cultural differences which aren't so obvious or apparent to the occassional visitor because of the veneer of a shared language, which can give the impression we are closer culturally than is the case.

The foundation stuff on which society is based, the abstract principles and political doctrines, are as similar as Canterbury in New Zealand and Canterbury in the UK. Effectively a world apart, and the hows and whys of this take a few years to suss out, but basically boil down to the fact that in Ireland, people are far less interested in the visual appearance of their fellow citizens, than their mental state, and there is a refreshing and total absence of "class" as it operates in Britain.

So there is very much a sense of not knowing who is who when you first arrive, but in a positive way which means you cannot immediately tick people off into cozy cultural stereotypes, which makes one question the assumptions held in England, of how to judge, behave and treat others.

~

By the time i heard i had not got into the Heaney centre, i had settled into Dublin and so did not take it as a rejection as such, as i would not have been able to afford the course anyway. By this time i had cottoned on that Dublin was probably the best place in the world for a chancer trying to be serious about poetry and i already had a couple of killer anecdotes about meeting prestigious figures in the poetry world who had only existed to me before in books and my imagination. The stars of the firmament in which i wished to shine, seen and spoken to in the flesh, on a "home" ground; or rather the first ground where i felt a sense of being at home poetically.

There is a magic about the place which i had only experienced previously in the depths of my creative inner mind, the dream world which was only an inner thing in England, becoming an exterior manifest reality in Dublin, in a totally effortless, natural way. My instinctive self which had never had much luck in England, here, did far better than i could have dreamt, and based on things occurring here in, what in England, would be the craziest and most un-happenable of situations.

The world my senses apprehended, began to mirror the secret inner fanatsy i held, which related to being a poet; as the bombardment of choice, the hurley game of living here, and the most passing whim, could be acted upon in a totally unique way one can only grasp by being here.

Dublin is the only place i have experienced where the residents understand that others elsewhere, we cannot explain the intricacies of how society here operates in a way the absent "others" who have no experience of breathing here, could fully cognise. The events of quotidian life, the Freudian observation that people from this culture are the only ones he knew who are impervious to his psycho analysis theory, as there really is a genuine psychic attachment, unbroken and still very live, which stretches back to pre-oral times and the closest one can call it is Poetry, or "the music of what happens."

Life is poetry here. It is so, all existence and people from a flea to the five million currently living here, their existence individually and singular, can be contextualised as poetry, if one has the secret books, the knowing to do this task. And so, my research reached a terminus and the six year slog to Anruth is over now I have written out the million words it took to contextualise my findings into a 500 word poetic philosophy none can top, based on the best. Amergin's forgotten text and holy grail poetic of any wordic schema. The equivalent of Horace's Ars Poetica in the bardic philosophy, which - along with the basic skeleton of the four cycles of irish myth - allows one to take a breather; and so I have been concentrating on composing in the "write-through" form, where one takes a text and rejigs the words to a different one.

I have been at this on and off for the last three years, starting with Sylvia Plath's The Colossus, and gradually ending up using the constituent letter parts of small blog deposits, as demonstrated below.

This one is only a rejig of words, the Robert Minhinnick translation of, Far Rockaway, by the Welsh-language poet Iwan Llwyd, the full of which is here.

Write through of "Rule Britannia"

ANN AT BRIL ERIU

Why picture loutish
eton craic
a fab lush brogue
patriotic anoraks,
and pride deserting
gentlemen at war
in eccentric sighs?

I slip bowless to
a sir free land
no snoot cockers
great knobs to hail,
cut the tie today
for a happiness few
feel,
aim high
hack
ask fate Howayiz
wah wah
is yiz
wib
us
hdhdwhb

~

This draft poem is an example of the "write-through" form, which is where the writer takes an existing piece, technically called in poetic circles, a - "found text" - and re-configures it to another one, using the same words and/or letters.

This is the original text, titled "Rule Britannia":

Out of the bus window I spy a white-haired gentleman on a bicycle wearing a pair of brown brogues, with white socks, khaki desert shorts, an anorak and a black bowler hat. He is a picture of English eccentricity as he whizzes past County Hall and I feel a surge of patriotic pride at the sight of him.

~

The woman who composed it is an ex-teacher, now pole dancer, from Kent, who keeps two blogs and writes under the nom de guerre of Glamour Puss. The found piece is from a blog called Clairvoyance, which she started in August of this year, 15 months after beginning her main blog The Pole Affair. The Pole Affair deals with her day to day work and personal life, whilst Clairvoyance (19c French, literally 'clear seeing'), is her ruminating a tad deeper about existence, what she writes as:

"Elucidating Everyday Wonder Made Manifest"

~

I first came across her several months back in the comment section of Kate Evans Bush, who blogs as Ms Baroque in Hackney. Glammy has an honesty and eloquence to her writing i suspect few pole dancers have. After 15 months of blogging about her work and private life, Puss, as she calls herself, posted a piece on Friday which effortlessly articulates, for even the most amateur armchair shrink to discern, the human reasons behind her decision to bin off teaching and twirl round a pole in next to nowt for a nine to five. She switched careers in the immediate aftermath of a disastrous relationship with an unsuitable man who treated her shabbily.

~

The write through form is at the opposite end of the compositional spectrum from strict metrical writing, but at least, if not more intellectually challenging, as it is like sieving ones mind through a tea strainer; knocking down an edifice of letters, and rebuilding an entirely different text with them.

No one told me of this form, as my first time creating in it was three years ago when i was in the third and final year of writing school, working on a poem, when my eye came to fall on Ted Hughes book, Lupercal, resting on top of Sylvia Plath's collection, The Colossus.

The poem i was working on i had just written and it struck me to re-write it, using the same words, and the creative flow was such that i ended up writing through Sylvia Plaths title poem from The Colossus, about the relationship with her father. At this point i only used the same words and broke down a few conjoining ones into their constituent letters, but in the few short years that have followed, have found that short pieces such as this, are ideal to take this exercise to the next stage.

It is a great exercise for homing ones intellectual fluidity, as i don't have to think of anything apart from the letters i have to play with, and i will post the Plath poem and write through tomorrow, and will probably be on this form for the next while, as i have run out of stuff to research, as the stuff i wanted to finds out about when i left university three years ago, i have done so, and am wondering..what next, as Plato said to Yeats when the coat hanger rapped in his noggin..

Lonliness Of The Moon

They live in the lamplight of dusk
riven shade, releasing souls
from the stone of dolmen beds
Diarmuid and Gráinne stretched
out on when fleeing from Fionn.

We live as water, their lair’s
underground and we listen
to sea shells for sounds of their life
crowding in on us.

Now their memory is lost, dream
stealing and tossed by love,
bent by Manannán’s whim,
we steer the world, a spinning top
of life, the merry go round
they draw still, and watch
collecting in the ether, the air
of humanity’s ghost,
its shadow dissolving their light,
and our rough thought, swept
gentle in the grain of speech
a hue of Áine and Aengus Óg.

Stay upon our rock and set love
free, be gentle and kind
whilst remembering life
is precious, breathing invisibly
still, hear?

Angelic Deer Cry

Strong is the power of ones light.
The spiritual armour of goodness
Resisting rulers' wicked wiles
And the cult of men in darkness.
Within us our beastial faith lies,
Learning of truth in the fearless
Charm composed to invoke divine
Defence against all manner of evil
And inscribed upon Saint Patricks
Breastplate. A loricae. The snippet
Below, in druidic protection meter.

"I arise today
Through the strength of heaven
Light of sun
Radiance of moon
Splendour of fire
Speed of lightening
Swiftness of wind
Depth of the sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me."

Peace we shod in the feet of faith
Standing in light with a shield
Of truth. Damnation we quench
By prayer. No devil fire awaits
Above; all wickedness is here
On earth. Salvation - in the end
Is down to us, flesh and sword,
The word our blood, and spirit
Gods writing it hear our belief.

Cherish Mon Amis.

I recently read a book on Yeats. The Yeats We Knew, which are the texts of five Thomas Davis Lectures, first broadcast on RTE in 1965, as part of the centenary celebrations of his birth. These short memoirs in this 100 page slim book, give the reader a glimpse of the man behind the mask. And the impression we are left with is, he was a lonely man. He made it his business to strike the poetical pose, and really i am just riffing now as my energies are gone somewhat.

After a brief flood and flash,
lead the evening dance to a goal
he has

the verse king of Kilmainham, free
to sing, made reality a webbed light
of October mist withering in pale grey
cloud that dimmed to a soft cool
breeze, chilled as night drew in.

And the ghost of William Yeats said:

"Then what?"

Did the words he write solve any wrongs
or slights his loved ones suffered
as they fled? And what cold bed
of mourning found the arch beneath
which i awoke, dawned on heather,
left in rann, a rambling man waffling on,
head sieved to a million bits
as instructors came, speaking
of this and that to him?

Of how silence persecutes
a void of knowing calm
in setting sun, as a brief flash of solitary
life leaves us, all and one, all alone,
the ghosts who sit on Yeats's throne
and count the hours before morning
in moon lit mists that wax on wrongs
we suffer when the cold grey gun
- pulled to shoot a dream that blew
a brothers head wide open -
makes a splash for cameramen
who catch the brain seeping
as critics tell you of us, jangling on
and on, calling for the glow to spot,
shine upon one mind alone?

An audience anonymity dressed,
freedom dead so we can sing
of our concealed sex, saying,
what of it?

Tell the mob to name
what isn't in the hat and then, after
that, to rhyme the hours we have took
and speak, without a cursing call
or backward look, goodbye, adios,
the world released us mon amis,
to a vacuum of knowing, and the slow
sharp pull of bestowing one cloak
we made as humanity leaped in crawing
song. And men and women hiding
there, who believed in freedom once,
will ask, is it here to sing again?

Of course said A to B to C
we only wanted to be free
in our anonymity. What's our name,
tell us quick, let them keep invisible
irrelevance in heavy hints, our wish
in clever words revealed a sinning
truth kinking time, in wrought
thinning sloped grace of a moon
facing West.

They jangle on faery friends and sing
of what lies eloquence make behind
the grey eyes of a grey ghost
and the hooded caul of a thousand
broken lives left blowing in the laughter
of songs sung anonymously that sing
and strike the blow; tell us
of yourself, oh invisible host, again.

And really, it was a good read.

Shock and Bore

Someone asked what had happened to Peter Hitchens, the man who advocates genoicide for muslims, brother to Christopher the Daily Mail fascist, both of whom have made a life out of professional moaning.


What's happened to him?

I think he has detached from humanity. I saw him on the British TV programme, Question Time and he looked fighting fit, much more well scrubbed than his brother who was also on the same show. He struck me as very arrogant. A very "important" air about him. I haven't read any of his stuff, and so can only respond to him as an intellectual construct and printed entity. Detached from the real humanity of him, as i have only experienced Hitch via an electronic image, talking on a TV show to a crowd of people.

Many who asks questions, this is there moment in the spotlight. Imagine the tales of the audience, the bungled question say for one unused to public speaking. The tongue tied and shy and the unique individuals, all of them, just like Hitch and his bro. Hitch struck me as a very articulate person, and a great sense of conviction about what he said. That he believed what he was advocating, was the main point i got from this experience.

And reading the blog Rosen links to about Hitchen doing his warmonger act to a provincial American audience, was struck by how the writer also interpreted him in person. Basically saying that what he advocated was genocide of a billion people who have a faith in a fiction he trashes as such, but very unintelligently, and selfishly, i suspected, as what he promotes is linked to his own financial position.

The book he wrote, from what i gather, however clever the arguments in it, also promote what he is known for saying, which is to address what he sees as a problem which has not materially affected his own existence, with great physical force. I think he may have carved out a very well paid career for himself, as a man who causes controversy in order to benefit financially from the hoo ha.

A very selfish and ultimately unintelligent thing really, as he is basically advocating world war, just so he can fly round the world and feeling important as he winds up the masses. He doesn't advocate a solution to the problems his own mind alone puffs up - magnifying a threat and blowing it out of proportion, for the selfish reasons of making himself money, i suspect - and thus he displays supreme stupidity; as the ultimate logic of what he is saying, would cause his golden laying goose and jet set life to disappear, and it would be only then the daft git copped on.

When the financially lucrative rhetoric he espouses, talking in a very confrontational way and offending the fundamental sensibilities of a culture not his own, returned materially at its most terrible logic consequence, and forced the silly twit to live in the material conditions his stupidity seems intent on creating for others he does not know personally and who play no part in his life, except as the fictional fodder feeding his golden goose.

I would suggest we laugh at him, as there is nothing more effective than deflating the ego of a self important bore like this person..what's his name? Hitchens hitching his soul to the dark side we all have the hate of a fighting fit hack whose cause is getting cash, whose love is imperial, whose books sell by the shed load, feeding on a wave of fear and causing it to grow. One man, one dickhead who calls people stupid to their face when they ask him a question, as the linked article states. If one person calls another stupid, surely it means they too understand and are capable of stupidity?

A good rule of thumb is that anyone who flies round the world profiting from a rhetoric advocating genocide, making lots of lolly, insulated completely from the worlds they speak of, knowing them only as a specialist self righteous bore who passes through gathering evidence for his one sided crap arguments many find distasteful, the rule of thumb is these people are dangerous talkers doing it, not for a Love of humanity, but money. Speak of the daft git, but his arguments are rubbish and he has had a lifetime sat on his arse thinking in print, and anyone can sound reasonable and clever, if they find out how to.

The real responsibility a writer has once they have reached this state of eloquence, i believe, is to try and make the world a better place, not worse, and by the sounds of it, he wants muslims to suffer, so he can have a few quid. And so i hereby propose Hitchen be known from now on as the man who scratches for hate, itching sore points and if he really wants to help, to go and help as a charity worker in a third world country and get a dose of humanity, like right now, and give the thick cu.. a cutting quip, quick, hitch him to Love and forget the guy, man, male macho posturing...is he a bricklayer, a carpenter, and artist of the flesh? No, so picture the thicko as a man in a dress, visualise it and laugh.

Call him an idiot sat on his arse for a living, thinking..wow aint he the clever dick, a sissy, a big girls blouse who hasn't got the courage to fight the physical battles his doom and gloom, but very financially lucrative texts call for. So what does that say?

He wants to be cock of the world, but is a coward who does it with a clever hating mind, as he feels physically inadequate, obviously. Silence the gob by seeing him for what he is. A prickle ickle dickie wickle boring git..we love you hitch, please, we beseech you, stop being such a miserable git, bluddy moaning all the time for cash, and surprise yourself and us by doing summat good for a change...learn Arabic and tell us then what you do know, i bet you bloody can't be arsed to speak of the muslim world in a language it understands instead of all this phoney baloney hack speak that is so last millennium man, aint you heard, humanity has been restored, should you choose to believe it.

I do and earn nowt from my pronouncements but the good feeling i get from working hard and not going for the easy kicking. We can all moan, but the true pros know the real gift is speaking of goodness, the .00001% who learn how to control their gobs and direct poetic goodness to come, with nought but the mind and a belief in whatever fiction it takes to float. Ascend, transcend the quotidian and reach the enobling stream, in order to lead by example..

Sidhe Lennan

Eye the chasm of a heart.
refuse to look past
a pool, cloud drawing
love to force a tide of will.

Storms of white horse water
whip the dawn and
sleeping the beggar
scattered his dream.

Love is a neighbour
in this mirror of broken
blossom rippling in night
scented silence and divinity
crying within us, rises
in the remembrance of a ghost
flickering beyond love,
the momentary illusion of a lost
son who fled when passion
beneath his hooded caul web
wrapping the night above us,
enmeshed her fragrance
of memory tapered
to what passed between us,
what drop from the scaffold
befell us and why the platform
will claim a green glow.

The red lipped lady envisaging
Ballsbridge and Tara, marching
the ancestral flow of his heart less
rendered to hate; shocked to the state
of bemused imitational grace.

Flit free soul
steal the shadow of my home
and make love with none but
your own, cool breeze we move
through in sandy cove, moss
siding on the wall, complicit the windless
sidhe is here.

Strike up the tune, smith
bellow and humour, the spiritual show
before last moon drop, first rain falling
is lost now in wetness, the cool slow rock

No longer will i wait for the sensuous skin
of a princess who held an image for me
trembling to turn and leave, fading
as a wheat field waves beneath an August
moon, the lip red life of her i will discover,
the eye beholden to no other.

Who loves me and shows wonder
in the words making love for her, hear? Us
an illusion, we the air and world through
which sidhe move, and the girl
i will become when the womb of life
surrenders and sea claims my energy,
releasing the feat of gods who craw
no longer on Fodhla's shore for humanity
to come.

Sidhe told first, of love blind in a silly verse
sincerely writ which hit me, stripped me of anger
and now we learn together as man and wife,
split no more, the goddess unseen
devoid of flaws and a soul of grace,
a heart who cares, a women who made me
believe again.
You.

Angel, voice in the head.

Angel is a person online who is a regular voice in my head and i learnt today s/he smashed up the telly:

"I wouldn't advise anyone else to do this as I was surprised how thick the glass is and had to hit it a few times and the splinters fell around the place."

Angel is a real force promoting literacy, and s/he fears for going mad, as s/he feels like a number. I think s/he lives in Manchester, near the Derbyshire side and s/he has been a force for good in my life. I met this person first on the Guardian books blog when i was researching my po-mo practice based on the ogam alphabet and David, who i fancy coz he looks like he might bin posh off and settle down wiv me in my bedsit, now the voices have come, to instruct me how to send orders to my butler in the intellectual womb of the anima mundi, which the heavy user of cannabis, william yeats, details in the distillation of his own research, the head crunchingly baffling and superbly logical book, "The Vision".

This was never finished by Yeats as it was his bible of self, the seriousness with which he took his life and work, all there for the reader to enjoy, or rather, shake their head in bafflement at, for yeats was gyre mad, going on about them like angel does boom boom and the bbc being gitz.

Angel sent the governement a letter, but they fobbed angel off, after s/he had told them s/he wasn't paying it, and would smash the telly up if they demanded money with menaces gain. Angel is a very cultured and civilised person with a few pet hates; one being the aforementioned "boom boom" music that anti-social people play when doing drive bys and gangstering about wiv da faeries, like posh and rebecca, who fancies me coz i am the worlds most successful nail extension practitioner on the planet. The voice in my head Angel wrote:

"The letter said they would call so I wanted to leave them in no doubt. I had told them I'd smash it if they didn't give me time to sell it as I just would not pay again for what has become a pain in my ears and a phobia. I took a few pictures of it to send to them but I think they're going to call and torment me."

So why do they do it, the BBC gitz? Do the boom boom? and the bbc wiv all that rubbish they put on the telly.

The poor quality and declining standards of the official apparatus, is another bedbug of Angel's; and is the reason i do not watch, as most of it has no point beyond having a rubbish excuse to pay photogenic people who can appear to be interested in what the rational mind says is rubbish; lots of money. Why do attractive chefs, gardeners and other bores get paid thousands a day by the tax and licence payers, when a less photogenic but better candidate does not? Sheer prejudice based on the most shallow of human whims. A desire to see only nice lookers. Why do airheads get lots of lolly for being stupid and convincing the rest of us this behaviour is worthy of imitation?

"I hadn't switched the thing on for months from a phobia that developed as a result of the drumming that invariably accompanies every programme. I've had to drop my favourites one after another from the drumming soundtracks. Then I wrote and told them."

The bbc are hounding my Angel and it's not on and s/he is the victim of a conspiracy between the bores who pay themselves ridiculous amounts of cash to have people fawn over them for doing what we do for free. Create. And they create boom boom bull..ahem..pimping up playschool next they will, getting jackanory on the go, reading Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs to five year olds...

"Some times I wish I had the courage to hang myself because once these civil servants get a hold on you they never want to let go.

I hope I won't go mad when they start poking their noses around in my home; that I'll be able to stay sane because they way they treat me is nothing less than persecution and I don't know what it is that sets them off. But I'll be living on a knife edge until this torment and ordeal is over. I just don't want any more BBC, or any others, in my life anymore."

Angel likes having civilised conversation, reading, writing, hot baths, cooking and basically enjoying life as a normal person without any weirdos ramming it down our gobs; da bling and moan manly macho stuff, that life is crap and that we should all kill one another to get what we want. The pimp my life bbc reality presented to us wiv da hoes and playas in a forest of weeds. A thick and doomed Male mindset i find offensive as a femminist spokesperson.

I do not have a tv licence, coz i do not have a telly and and the one thing i notice is the dearth of bad news. Even the radio is not listened to, or newspapers bought. I was buying the irish daily mail for the first few months of it appearing, as it was only 20 cents or summat daft, and quite a lot of text, and as it was new, the editorial team would have been wanting to appear different than the rest of the comics like the irish star and irish sun; and when the irish daily mail came, i was surprised as the one papaer in england i bought, was the mail.

And some of my irish friends reckon the mail was a good thing to happen, even though i was moaning it was just another step for the west brit mentality to be twisting our heads.

Carol Malone, i think it's her, i'm not sure, but the editor, nolan his name, unsure how to act, what tenor to go for. I mean this is as brit as it gets innit, the mail; and now i don't have a telly, or listen to the radio, when i pop to the shop, i only have to glance at the headlines to get the picture. But nolan the ed, he is a young fella and does the regular grave address to the nascent readership which its parent paper promoting the british agenda of tip toe tally ho aul chap, does. But it's has gone up to 70 cent now, so i stopped buying it, so i don't know if nolan is getting it any more irish or not.

The commentating hacks are D4 headz moaning about the school run and try to sound exciting, and the one thing i love about here, is that all this new west brit act, of aping the english mores, for a tip ho jolly chap, is too comedic to take seriously, and cannot root really, the materialism which will see us being greedy gitz and inhumane to one another; in the sense of shared cultural currency being no more than a tip ho jolly nice mansion there biffo me beano laah, and really when i think about it, i don't fancy carol any more, not since i learned about her obsession with how posh looks and a hopefully soon to be single dave, who fancies me.

Carol i always admired a bit, for looking good, having her make up on in the right way, and generally, being a hack who photographs well, but nolan, well, he fancies me i reckon, and after i saw the cricket match at trinity between the theatricals and the teflon headz, that was it, i cracked the code of how to make Englsih an acceptable cultural fling on the lawns of Oxford, who also fancies me, i think, but either way, once cricket gets took up by us, and we start all getting behind it, once we we start winning stuff, then that is the culture cracked and tara stands...

H.E. Bates: Fair Stood The Wind For France.

1979-1983 were my secondary days, from childhood to ones youthful coming of age in a time, just like todays.

The kids, as they are now. Some bookish and studious, swottish and "stiffs". Some smoking and swearing at the square ancient gitz over 16, who just didn't get it; could never be hip, as one being young whose horizon of time was eternal and wrongdoing didn't exist.

As a teenager who knew Duran Duran were really nought but a flash in the pan. And words, came at my command, as "king of the one liner" who dispatched all with a quip off the cuff that came from ...only God knows where..verbally dueling and never beaten or bested; until the first flush of full beauty had gone, as i turned 31..32..33 and slipping into forty, facing down the OAP barrel, i never thought i would live to see today, but did so; and for this i give thanks to God.

A good looking gob no longer, alas, O woe is moi, with only a costume of masks to prove ones humanity and bluff with in the search for a soulmate who'll Love being a pensioner with me, when all's said and done.

For this is all i have. Literacy, dear readers, colleagues in Love looking for peace to move us prosperously forward, no longer looking down the barrel of a gun, needle or bottle, but wallowing in September sunlight.

And as one casts back to the time in class, one can hear a work of Literature that moves my hand here, now.

Fair Stood The Wind For France. The characters were a RAF crew who crashed and got sheltered in a farm house by a family with the Resistance, and the central love between Franklin and Francois. She with an unshakable faith in goodness and God. He, an agnostic loner, detached from all around him and trusting no one, till she came along. Frankie was a philanderer, losing himself in the bottle during a brutal wartime England.

His untrusting and world weary assumptions on humanity, challenged for the very first time when coming into contact with the French family, trusting still, faith in God and the moral duty of acting on the side of goodness in a treacherous time of collaboration and resistance to the nazi foe, which was the perfect scenario for Bates to explore the fundamental nature of humanity. Between the material and spiritual.

The gun Frankie keeps with him at all times, is the symbol Bates used to convey the essential intellectual core of Frankie's mental world view. One were the ultimate power resides with man, and the gradual dissolution of this psychological state came as he fell in love with Francois, and is exposed as a mirage in this passage:

"Frankie looked to the revolver and saw it suddenly as a useless and pathetic thing. He had become so used to handling a weapon as big as a house, and carrying enough power to wipe out a small town, that he had forgotten there were other sorts of power. He looked at the three people sitting in the lamplight waiting for a sound. He saw them, the three generations of one nation, as part of a defenseless people, as part of the little people possessing an immeasurable power that could not be broken...He knew it clearly now as a more wonderful thing, more enduring, and more inspiring power than he had ever believed possible: the power of their own hearts."

The story's surface had terror, war, drink and yet was not in yer face wound sharing, but deft storytelling, revealing an intelligence at work and the author, calling on the ineffable light of human goodness within, to maneuver the eternal.

I think that my passion for English as a child, was pot luck, as i had a great teacher, and played Malvolio at 13; the high point of my theatrical career thus far. It was downhill all the way since then, but still, introduced me to the joy of language. And i suppose mastering the intuitive nuts and bolts of it, depends on how much effort one puts in to acquiring "true" linguistic knowledge; which is..?

I suppose if prose is the light ale of writing, poetry would be the heavy proof gear, which most writers would agree is the creme de la creme profession, and the reason it attracts all sorts of chancers, deadbeats and those looking for the easy option.

And I admit, I was the same, as when i started writing i looked at it logically, thinking there are roughly four genres

Short story

Novel

Script

Poetry

And thinking the first three beyond me on a purely word-count basis, first opted to have a dabble at the fourth one, poetry. My reasoning being that, though the intellectual feat of juggling multiple characters and narrative involved in churning out the thousands of words needed to create a novel was beyond my ability, the creation of a hundred or so word poem; even an idiot like me must be capable of that.

Obviously this was in the mind of an untutored man approaching middle age; and to balance out any charge of amateur intent as a writer of poetry; my first ruminations on this topic led me to the decision, that i would rather write one formal sonnet whose quality was on a par with the worst of Shakespeare, than a thousand poems of disposable free-verse.

To this end i began a poem - still unfinished, in the sense i am not happy with it - which represents my very beginning in the dark art of bluffing in print that i am a poet.

Always in the mind, dreams and abstract thought
Just beyond where our conscious grasp can reach
And seldom is a complete meaning caught
When we try to give these glimpsed fragments speech.
If I, awake and able held a dream
In place so long that reason cuts the form
Would then the mind reveal through nightly stream
All of the inner truth with which we're born?
Would daylight's waking hours to us bring
Reality as such when slumbered warm?
Or would dreams be mute without voice to sing
And stay unlocked to keep a constant form?
Such thoughts as these have often been before
And leave our mind to ever search the more

So this is one of my semi-stone poems, its companion piece not yet written (hopefully) will be the final one i ever write; and casting an eye back six and a half years later, the most obvious technical point which betray this piece as the work of a beginner, is its lack of enjambment.

The syntactic sense of each line, ending at the terminal point of it, like a ship or train labouring along in regular and predictable short bursts. But still, this is the truth of my beginning and whatever the aesthetic properties of the piece are, I do take the tiniest crumb of artistic comfort that my desire to write was not occasioned by the negative impulse of jealousy and/or arrogance.

Twice i have come across people who began their foray into the poetic Art after reading, what they considered to be, weak and unaesthetic specimens written by another, in their opinion, less talented, fellow human, and being in some way offended, decided to re-dress the aesthetic balance in favour of Culture; which - rightly or wrongly - strikes me as another form of snobbery and an exclusional artistic rationale.

I have heard this argument twice now, the last time a couple of days ago, when someone told me, of the few poems they have ever written, the first was done so after reading an attempt by someone, which they thought so poor, they decided to write one in reply, to balance up the inferior art with what they considered to be the real gen, from their own mind.

I have always been suspect of this argument, no matter how convincingly it is presented. That the origins of ones Art can legitimately begin in this way.

Though i suppose the theoretical nuts and bolts will allow it in some form; it's just that it always smacks of a desire to write which is first occassioned by the impulse of jealousy. And again, as I write this i become aware that it may not be as cut and dried as my thinking would have it; seeing that there is such a thing as very poor poetry, and the collision of time, chance, and an individual life, the gods may conspire to arrange in such a way that a poet's career can begin in such circumstances. Who knows?

Can there ever be an answer to such a question?

I suppose at the final cut, we are all unique and have a singularly original path into the Art of verbal mimesis, the making of - what most would agree, on the face of it appear to be as - incredibly pointless acoustic objects; which serve no purpose in existential affairs.

Except perhaps as a spiritual stay, a psychic plea for Love and peace, and it is the level of logical, demonstrable faith the individual artist has about their "poetic" or critical blueprint on the whole shaboodle, which will imbue their work with what sense of gravity the reader detects or decides it possesses.

And poetry being the archest Art of the linguistic chancer, where several poems a year can be got away with; indeed bluffed up to being the output of a shamanic magus of the spaciest order, so the heights of self and public delusion are at their greatest within this - to my mind - laughably monickered; "profession."

A profession whose majority of contemporary practitioners have no unifying thread of technical agreement. Indeed there are a plethora of schools and cliques, all claiming bragging rights for possessing a hot line to a linguistic messiah, to speak from the pure poetic source of shade and light, and to be connected to shadows flitting in Plato's cave where the eternal Muse exists as the cosmic vibration detectable to only the most highly trained of instinctual artists bestowed by a divine Bard with the otherworldly gift as rare as hot snow.

Save Tara Gigs 29 September.

Dear Diary.

Another sunny day saving Tara. Cycled up the coast to Howth in the morning and then back to the homeless canteen for lunch. A small piece of pork and spinach and chick pea curry with rice and mash, and a slice of carrot cake, 1 euro ninety cent.

Spent the afternoon writing e mails and catching up with who is saying what in the various poetical chat joints from which i am barred for speaking of bardic lore. A name none dare speak, for fear of having to acknowledge a poetic truth too complex to cognise without much study.

Sad, but we all need our campaigns to keep us in active service at the front line of WaR, the writing and recital which forms the basis of a serious bores career in creative unemployment and a full time life of total work avoidance.

Then to the Royal College of Surgeons for 6.30 to the Denis O'Driscoll launch of his new book. It was in the ballroom and packed to the gills. I was on the lookout for a big fish after nearly finalising the bill for the Save Tara gig on 29 September, which I am organising the poets for as part of my MC duties. I was three short and had a feeling the real job would be finished there.

One of the female poets I had written to but had not got back as she only checks her e mail once a week, Bernadette O'Reilly, was there and agreed to do it, so two more to go. At this point i had four women and two men, the idea to have an equal balance of sexes..

I asked one poet I knew, but he wasn't keen to do it without payment, then asked Pat Boran, RTE's answer to Ian MacMillan, but a much savvier and gifted operator. He immediately agreed, until told the date, which clashed with another gig he has booked, there in black and white, printed in the Poetry Ireland newsletter.

He suggested asking Peter Fallon, and Gabriel Rosenstock, Ireland's premier Irish language poet, with over 100 books to his name, and at this point got speaking to Tom Conaty, who was advocating Rosenstock also.

I met Gabriel first at an IMRAM event in 2005, which is the Irish language poetry festival, and his method of introduction was very novel. He waved his hands around my aura chaunting a bardic Ohhmm, and said a few words in Gaelic, and i spun him one of mine when he requested me to, after which he took my hand, solemnly looking into my eye saying that our meeting had been written in the stars and was meant to be.

Rosenstock was only one of three poets I have spoken to who know of the Amergin Cauldron of Poesy poem, Conaty bumping up the number to three tonight. I said to Paul Casey, who is co-ordinating nationally, that I thought O'Driscoll's launch would be the place things were nailed down, and that the list would come by bardic methods, as we wanted poets who care about Tara, not the ones with books to sell first and Conaty is perfect as he is very modest; proposing i ask Rosenstock do it when i first spoke with him. And it was only when he started talking of myth and i asked him to do it, i realised he was mad keen to do it in the first place.

Conaty is a Cavan poet and senachie/storyteller and childrens' writer, who is as mad on the myth as i am, and we had a good long chat, and just as Boran re-aired his thought about asking Peter Fallon, Fallon came through the door with Heaney, and i decided against it as the two heavyweights stopped at the top of the stairs and shay and i made direct eye contact for the very first time, on the fourth time of our orbits intersecting, a number the bardic mind could go to town on as regards interpreting the psychic foundations of this whole shaboodle; the just meant to be'ness of it, saving Tara. And it is fitting that the bill was finalised in this space, where all the Irish mob from the Mossbawn magus down were milling about.

Heaney threw his hat in with the agitators on Thursday's independent and any true poet, as Boran and Conaty did, would immediately recognise the worthiness of such a cause. Not to promote the selling of books is this, but to keep the dream and keep the memory, tell how the throne room there at Tara was called the "Réalta na bhFile", "Star of the Poets."

The four cycles of myth can be poo pooed, but in a wider context, the global one, this island is the HQ of poetry and we are rightfully proud of the true ones who spend six years swimming home to the Well of Siegas, the source of the Boyne, as no other country has the poetic we do, and learning to be a bardic poet, takes the same effort and length of study as to become a doctor, and just as difficult.

Don't confuse the real Irish poet with their English equivalent, a pointless rent a bore employed to hang around libraries or infant schools chanting the cat sat on the mat to disinterested five year olds. We are the best in the world, with the most respect. Look at Heaney, Yeats, Kavanagh, all touched with the otherworldly crush the English mob can only dream and get green about, so Love and peace, the toxic shock has gone and so think on, Save Tara from they who believe it is worth trampling on 2000 years of culture to shave an hour off their journey to the commercial centers they only want to accrue material wealth in, and for what? To have two houses instead of one? Three cars instead of none?

Three generations ago, we were all in the bog, and look at us now, greedy bastards pretending we are connected to they who did have it tough, my mothers great grandmother tossed on the roads of Bohola, Mayo, in 1847, she herself hearing second hand the tale, of they who dies in their millions, and for what? So we can sup in Starbucks and moan about the weather and what shit is on telly, what material goods we deserve? I am a poor man and always have been, never had a penny, never missed it, and on 29 September in seven locations on the island including Dublin, Derry and Achill, Save Tara gigs will be happening.

Have pride in your island and attend if you can, voice support for the real Ireland, not the millionaire mindset, the expectations of our dead generations, ran to a full belly and a roof over their heads, a song in their hearts and ...yeah, simple life untroubled by a mass of material wealth

Official Poetry: Ireland.

This is a section of the dán díreach ('strict-straight verse') anamain ('glorious profit') praise poem by arch poetry professor and Ard Ollamh Eireann, Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, (Godfrey Finn O'Daly).

Written when in the literary-legal service of the Earls of Desmond, composed in honour of Maurice Fitz Maurice Fitzgerald junior (Muiris Óg), the future short-lived second Earl of Desmond, and addressed directly to Edward III.

At whose court in Windsor castle Maurice Óg, the eldest son and heir of the third baron and first earl Maurice Fitzthomas Fitzgerald Sr., and his first wife, Margarete De Barry, was briefly fostered/hostaged; spending time learning the ways of a Hiberno-Norman aristocrat serving his king in Ireland.

Edwardian Old Irish expert and the poem's translator, Osborn Bergin, has dated the poem to between 1356, when the first earl, Maurice Fitz Thomas Fitzgerald, died and Maurice Óg succeeded him; and 1358, when the second earl, Maurice Óg, drowned crossing the Irish sea.

Maurice Óg was succeeded by his youngest half-brother, son of their shared father's third wife, Aveline Fitzmaurice, Gearóid Iarla, Gerald Fitzgerald Desmond the Poet earl.

Who leapfrogged his older brother, the eldest son of Aveline FitzMaurice, Nicholas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, who had been classified (in the language of the time) as an 'idiot'.

Gerald had a lot more luck in the hot seat than Maurice Jr., spending forty years in Limerick before snuffing out in 1398. Gerald's most famous poem is "Mairg adeir olc ris na mnáibh" ("Speak not ill of womenkind"). Legend has it he was a shapeshifter and got hitched in a diabolical union with the Tuatha Dé Danann and Munster earth goddess, Áine.

A throwback to the iron age practice, when the Kings of Munster married the sod itself. What truth there is in this, one can only speculate, but certainly he was the first of the Hiberno-Norman aristocracy to become a partially qualified literary Filí poet, writing poems in Gaelic and Norman French.

Indeed The Fitzgeralds of Desmond "Deas Mhumhain" - South Munster - were the immigrants who went most native with most gusto, and whom the phrase Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis - "more Irish than the Irish themselves" - sprung up around. Though this 350 year old dynasty rent apart in the Desmond Rebellions which kicked off the Tudor holocaust.

~

Áine was a granddaughter of Manannán mac Lir, the pyschopomp sea god and son of Lir, the oldest deity in Irish myth and ruler of the waves himself. And behind Lir therefore, a void of knowing. But we know the myth that sprung up around Gerald is that he sleeps beneath the horse shoe shaped Lough Gur, at the foot of Knockadoon Hill in county Limerick, and that one day he will return on a silver shod steed, to "save Ireland."

And water features prominently in the history of this once most romanticized, famed and august, now wholly forgotten clan of Geraldine aristocrats. That rose from being the hired muscle of an invading Strongbow's Norman army, through three barons, fifteen earls, and ten uninterrupted generations of brutal physical force politics; to end up Munster and Ireland's most culturally and politically influential and militarily powerful Medieval family.

A rum bunch and mixed bag, ranging from men of high culture, Lord Justices and Chief Treasurers  dispensing judicious and stately wisdom that maintained the cultural peace and socially prosperous harmony, to nephew, uncle, and cousin-killing nihilists and victims wracked on the tide of their own ego, greed, hate, history, hubris, humanity, love, religion, and the whims of a wicked Queen whose own hired muscle hunted down and exterminated the final tragic, Gerald FitzGerald, the 15th Earl of Desmond.

Whose decapitated head was sent and spiked on London Bridge, his half a million Munster acres were escheated, and planted with, among others, the poet Edmund Spenser. Who wrote the epic verse which birthed modern English poetry, The Faerie Queene, in one of Desmond's castles at Kilcolmon. That he had bagged for himself as Secretary to Lord Grey's mission, and near silent witness to the extermination of this line by the understated two word 'rough work' Spenser recorded his fellow man of letters and mercenary, Walter Raleigh, eagerly set about during the Smerwick Massacre, that signaled the ignoble tragic turning point of the doomed Second Desmond Rebellion.

But back to water. Poet Gerald the third earl's son and successor, John Fitzgerald, the fourth earl, lasted only a year before drowning, according to the rolls, in Bel-atha-an-droiched, a place google gives no return for.

A 2000 year language, lost. Yet the ancient poetic knowledge and Coimgne, there still, on the pages time forgot, in black and white for all and any to possess who are interested and have the focus, thirst, grit and grá to will the words in letters struck lying scattered surely reanimated back to eternal life upon the modern electronic page.

Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, died in 1387. He also experienced the heavy weight of profound spiritual tragedy; losing his own son, and writing a poem expressing inconsolable bereavement for his child, which appears in the seminal introductory lecture forwarding the book from which the Desmond praise poem also is taken. Irish Bardic Poetry: Texts And Translations.

First published in 1970, and with 66 poems residing between the pages.

The verses below make up the middle section of this long praise poem. The portion of it buttering up Edward III, in which the eminently educated courtly poet, Ó Dálaigh, likens Maurice Jr. to Lugh, the Tuatha Dé Danann god who was the son of Tuatha Dé Dannan father Cian and Formorian mother Ethniu (Enya)-; daughter of Balor; a pirate-raider whose stronghold was Tory island off the coast of Donegal, and who kept her locked in a tower after a druidic prophecy that he would die at the hands of his grandson.

Needless to say a long tale of his birth involving shenanigans with a stolen cow and Cian disguised and helped by the female druid Birog, dressed as a women, tricked his way in to the tower and got jiggy with Enya, who had seen no man except the one in her dreams, who was Cian, naturally, this being a completely mythical tale.

And when she gave birth, to triplets, Balor ordered they be slung in the sea, but Lugh was saved by druidess Birog and given to Manannan mac Lir, who passed him on to be reared by his foster mother Tailtiu, final queen of the Fir Bolg, a Connacht based outfit of gods and goddesses. And when it was time for him to become the star, as was written in his "dán", another name for Art and poetry, which carries a much deeper connotational valency, with a core meaning of "fate"; Lugh went to Tara, at Samhain.

Where he is turned away, as the door is closed for the night, and cannot be opened till daylight.

The doorkeeper says he can't come in, as they have "a man of your art" in there. But undeterred Lugh reels off a list of what he can do, the various arts, crafts and and skills he has. Still no dice. Until he asks, if any of the Tuatha De Dannan flock inside the walls of Tara, possess all the arts he has claimed to have.

And with that, Lugh jumps over the walls, thus negating the need for the door to be opened.

Basically, he was not going to be turned away, as he was the best and knew it was meant to be because of his dán his poetry, his fate. Written in the stars, the same as Balor's dán/poetry/fate was that he die at the hand of his grandson.

And it was Hubris that got Balor done, coz he stole the cow from Cian, and thus the reason why Cian was on Tory island dressed as a women in the first place. So if Balor had not been so greedy and covetous, he would not have written his own fate in that way.

And this tale, The Coming Of Lugh To Tara, is precised down by Ó Dálaigh, and we read in the line:

"The like of Maurice, who exalted bards, was Lugh Longhand"

The stock trick, of likening the subject of the praise to the ancient most noble and famed Irish gods. This particular Earl was not noted for anything so deserving of such extravagant praise, and would be dead by the age of twenty-three; but that was by the by.

The job of a poet in bardic-filidh Gaelic literary culture was a universe away from what the job of a poet is today; because their Tradition was linked unbroken to the living druids, and had been around for 2000 years by the time the Tudor monarchy pro-actively rent the island and all life on it apart.

Cromwell of course, who came less than fifty years after the death of Liz 1, being the antichrist figure in Ireland. A mentally ill person who believed he was some kind of messianic instrument - as his insane scribblings prove - and thus his policy of terror, scorched earth and famine, that Cromwell believed should be, and was, visited upon the Irish, as the will of what terrible God his poor deluded brain conjured during his bouts of clinical lunacy, commanding him to slaughter the Gaelic sinners, professing spiritual fealty to Rome and speaking a language he did not understand one word of and wished to only eradicate from the face of the earth.

But this was still 250 years away, and Ó Dálaigh was a cut above the average Ard Ollamh, one of the top three to have ever practiced in the whole 1200 years bardic-filidh poets' literary tradition.

~

It was no marvel that he did good, so excellent
was his training. No marvel men envied his fortune

so great was his gaiety. A merry tale will be found
with the skillful youth; so tall and bright, elegant

and white-footed; this leader of the fair host who
excelled in understanding, comeliness and success.

Who - in short - won all the varied excellences
with the excellence of his sweetness of voice.

His prize for valour, his prize for wisdom, for beauty
or generosity, were not granted to any heir of his age.

Strength in luck, luck with success, a modest heart,
understanding to keep him, curling tresses he had

gotten. When he was injured, the sod that
chanced to be under his white foot, certified it to be

the handsome brown haired prince. The planets

declared it to his curling hair.

~

The like of Maurice, who exalted bards, was Lugh
Longhand; equally great in knowledge was this

valiant compeer equal in sway. At the age of
Maurice, the earl's son, he delivered Banbha,

when he, the mighty tree of Bladhma, defeated
the race of the Formorians. At Eamhain in the east,

Lugh the darling of Tara beheld Tara - Rampart
of Té - when he reached it after searching the whole

earth. Lugh, champion of our choice, finds the door
closed: he goes to the smooth even-surfaced wall;

he strikes the knocker. "Where have you come from"
The doorkeeper said

"O young red-cheeked man; tall, smooth, strong
and bright?"

Answered Lugh, who sought nor shirked no fight
"I am a poet from Eamhain, of the Apple trees,

of swans and yew trees."

"It is not lawful for you" said the doorkeeper,
"to come to our good house. There is a man

of your art in our stronghold, bright and ruddy one.
The House of Miodhchuairt belongs at this time

to the sons of Ethliu; we must tell of the qualities
of the fair curved house. One of the qualities of the

House of Miodhchuairt, whose borders are smooth,
is that two of one craft are not admitted, fair

and furious one. So many are the arts
of the Tuatha Dé Dannan, bestowers of cloaks,

that you must bring to them an art they do not know."

"Among my arts - conceal it not to the company
beyond the gate - is leaping on a bubble without

breaking it. Go recount that. Snámh ós éttreóir,
arrying a vat on the ridges of the elbows;

these two arts are in my power; go declare it. Ask
whether there is one of the vigorous throng

that can outrun any steed on the fair soft green,
we promise a race. What i recount is here as an

extra beyond them, and in their own arts, none
is so expert as I. I speak not in anger."