Irish Diplomacy: The ability to tell someone to go to hell, so that he looks forward to the trip

[IrishBubbaLiberal]

Irish Diplomacy

The ability to tell a man to go to hell in such a manner that he looks forward to the trip

☘️

There is nothing like the aroma of a turf fire

———
https://interestingliterature.com/2017/03/10-of-the-best-seamus-heaney-poems-everyone-should-read/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging

Digging

Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

[IrishBubbaLiberal]

1. Seamus Heaney - from Whatever You Say Say Nothing

https://allpoetry.com/poem/11014161-from-Whatever-You-Say-Say-Nothing-by-Seamus-Heaney

from Whatever You Say Say Nothing

I'm writing this just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of 'views
On the Irish thing'. I'm back in winter
Quarters where bad news is no longer news,

Where media men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analyses
of politicians and newspapermen
Who've scribbled down the long campaign from gas
And protest to gelignite and sten,

Who proved upon their pulses 'escalate',
'Backlash' and 'crackdown', 'the provisional wing',
'Polarization' and 'long-standing hate'.
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,

LOTS MORE……

[Hekate]

2. ☘️Ah, the great Seamus Heaney. Thank you for this...☘️

Thanks also for reminding me of Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved Civilization. “ Now that I have it out from my Irish/Celtic bookcase I am well into re-reading it, and a pleasure it is.
☘️

[Hekate]

3. Have you read Moya Cannon's book "Carry the Songs" ?

Here is one poem:

Carrying the Songs
by Moya Cannon

It was always those with little else to carry

who carried the songs

to Babylon,

to the Mississippi —

some of these last possessed less than nothing

did not own their own bodies

yet, three centuries later,

deep rhythms from Africa,

stowed in their hearts, their bones,

carry the world’s songs.



For those who left my county,

girls from Downings and the Rosses

who followed herring boats north to Shetland

gutting the sea’s silver as they went

or boys from Ranafast and Horn Head

who took the Derry boat,

who slept over a rope in a bothy,

songs were their souls’ currency,

the pure metal of their hearts,


to be exchanged for other gold,

other songs which rang out true and bright

when flung down

upon the deal boards of their days.

☘️ ☘️ ☘️