'O WORDS are lightly spoken,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
'Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.'
"It needs to be but watered,'
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.'
"But where can we draw water,'
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree.'

SING of the O'Rahilly,
Do not deny his right;
Sing a "the' before his name;
Allow that he, despite
All those learned historians,
Established it for good;
He wrote out that word himself,
He christened himself with blood.
How goes the weather?

Sing of the O'Rahilly
That had such little sense
He told Pearse and Connolly
He'd gone to great expense
Keeping all the Kerry men
Out of that crazy fight;
That he might be there himself
Had travelled half the night.
How goes the weather?

"Am I such a craven that
I should not get the word
But for what some travelling man
Had heard I had not heard?'
Then on pearse and Connolly
He fixed a bitter look:
"Because I helped to wind the clock
I come to hear it strike.'
How goes the weather?

What remains to sing about
But of the death he met
Stretched under a doorway
Somewhere off Henry Street;
They that found him found upon
The door above his head
"Here died the O'Rahilly.
R.I.P.' writ in blood.
How goes the weather.?

"The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on."*

I
You probably already know, William,
that it’s pretty much all the same
as when you paced the battlements
and howled to the indifferent stars
"It seems I must bid the Muse go pack!"
, caught in Passion’s cataract –
that torrent of emotive poetic grief.

II
Though politics have changed,
there's still old men in the Senate
who stare but don’t seem to see.
They’re caught in youthful daydreams ---
the girls’ bras’ are too hard to unclasp,
even when employing that agéd charm.
(“But O that I were young again
and held her in my arms!”)
You weren't an exception;
politicians are also subject to the Human Condition.
Perhaps more than a poet,
probably more than a poet.
So I guess you got the double dose, William.
In a split second the State slips,
staggers, and reinvents foreign policies,
only to double-back on itself again and reverse.
I know you remember those you rhymed out in verse:
MacDonagh, MacBride, Connolly and Pearse;
their rifles still ring in the recesses
of the Public’s  miasmic mind –
the haze just dissipated over the Irish Sea.
And it's the spring of 2012.
Gore-Booth and Markiewicz are but marrowless bones,
Collins as well.
His still mix in the grave –
They’ve been for ninety years.
Yeah, it's pretty much the same,
Synge’s ******* is still unpopular.
In fact, plays are largely unpopular,
and playwrights work in restaurants
where sweat lingers on their brows
to eventually drip into an already-unfit meal.
It's hard to imagine a play once
brought Dublin to riot;
you couldn't start a riot now if you had
thirty drunken anarchists
with two Molotovs a piece
watch Godwin’s grave get gutted.
Though information is more accessible,
it's an age of information-apathy.
You'd **** a shotgun to your temple
if you saw the state of education today.
I'm afraid, William, it's all the same:
the gyres still run on ---
I fear they're running out of breath.

III
But it’d be imbalanced to leave you here;
at least you split on a Saturday.
Late-January trembles each year,
as the earth did the day you were consumed
in Helen(“who all living hearts has betrayed”)
’s immutable embrace;
your heart alone she could not betray.
And blind Homer who sang her betrayals
has ceased; mouths ran dry the day you died.
You left before your trade imprisoned you;
before the pen enchanted
your remaining years to a page.
You left before you couldn’t:
before the blitzkrieg;
before the world lost ten million more Robert Gregory’s
and you died from exhaustion mid-rhyme on the seventh-stanza of the five-million eight-hundred and fifty-fourth
elegy.
Regardless, it's really all the same.
Even those beggars are still playing twister with their whip.

The Proclamation had met with silence,
he must have known the fight was lost,
But, Connolly, faithful to the Cause,
Was accepting of its cost.

They took the Green, The inns of Court,
the Post on Sackville Street
De Valera stood at Bolandʼ s mill
the place where five roads meet.

Their commander, Pearse, a scholar,
Apportioned his menʼ s lives,
To garrison each strong point
Till the British would arrive.

Their tactics were pure suicide-
They could not hope to stand,
But their strategy was brilliant
Meant to rouse a sleeping land.

Sure to die of a snipers bullet-
Or a British firing squad
These unabashed Republicans
Held out against long odds..

Bloodied by the Rebel guns,
The foe paid dear for ground
The general post office was in flames
as their gunboats shelled our town.

The week crawled past and Dublin burned
The post Office glowed White hot
Pearse watched his troop dwindle and fade.
Faint from shell and shock..


They surrendered to be crucified
In Imperial British fashion
And by dying saved their country.
Their deaths brought her resurrection.

The British with their firing squad
Could ready, aim and fire.
The Brotherhood by dying
Could persuade, convince, inspire

Upon the graves of these patriot men
Was the seed of a Nation sown,
their struggle at the post office
Still captured in itsʼ stone.

THE Roaring Tinker if you like,
But Mannion is my name,
And I beat up the common sort
And think it is no shame.
The common breeds the common,
A lout begets a lout,
So when I take on half a score
I knock their heads about.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
All Mannions come from Manannan,
Though rich on every shore
He never lay behind four walls
He had such character,
Nor ever made an iron red
Nor soldered *** or pan;
His roaring and his ranting
Best please a wandering man.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
Could Crazy Jane put off old age
And ranting time renew,
Could that old god rise up again
We'd drink a can or two,
And out and lay our leadership
On country and on town,
Throw likely couples into bed
And knock the others down.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

II
My name is Henry Middleton,
I have a small demesne,
A small forgotten house that's set
On a storm-bitten green.
I scrub its floors and make my bed,
I cook and change my plate,
The post and garden-boy alone
Have keys to my old gate.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
Though I have locked my gate on them,
I pity all the young,
I know what devil's trade they learn
From those they live among,
Their drink, their pitch-and-toss by day,
Their robbery by night;
The wisdom of the people's gone,
How can the young go straight?
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
When every Sunday afternoon
On the Green Lands I walk
And wear a coat in fashion.
Memories of the talk
Of henwives and of queer old men
Brace me and make me strong;
There's not a pilot on the perch
Knows I have lived so long.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

III
Come gather round me, players all:
Come praise Nineteen-Sixteen,
Those from the pit and gallery
Or from the painted scene
That fought in the Post Office
Or round the City Hall,
praise every man that came again,
Praise every man that fell.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
Who was the first man shot that day?
The player Connolly,
Close to the City Hall he died;
Catriage and voice had he;
He lacked those years that go with skill,
But later might have been
A famous, a brilliant figure
Before the painted scene.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
Some had no thought of victory
But had gone out to die
That Ireland's mind be greater,
Her heart mount up on high;
And yet who knows what's yet to come?
For patrick pearse had said
That in every generation
Must Ireland's blood be shed.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.

PYTHAGORAS planned it.  Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That with a mallet or a chisel" modelled these
Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down
All Asiatic vague immensities,
And not the banks of oars that swam upon
The many-headed foam at Salamis.
Europe put off that foam when Phidias
Gave women dreams and dreams their looking-glass.
One image crossed the many-headed, sat
Under the tropic shade, grew round and slow,
No Hamlet thin from eating flies, a fat
Dreamer of the Middle Ages.  Empty eyeballs knew
That knowledge increases unreality, that
Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.
When gong and conch declare the hour to bless
Grimalkin crawls to Buddha's emptiness.
When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side.
What stalked through the post Office? What intellect,
What calculation, number, measurement, replied?
We Irish, born into that ancient sect
But thrown upon this filthy modern tide
And by its formless spawning fury wrecked,
Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace
The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.
April 9,

O BUT we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling ***?
You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?
how could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-***** call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

They gave their lives for an Irish nation,
Paid the ultimate price for our freedom.
Each of them signing the Proclamation
Which would guide Ireland in the years to come.
Thomas Clarke was the first signatory
With Patrick Pearse and Seán Mac Diarmada,
Also Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly,
Éamon Ceannt, Thomas Mary Mac Donagh.
Alas these were seven of many more
Who died as we fought for independence.
Whose names should be honoured for evermore
By us, our children and our descendants.
Never should we forget their legacy;
We owe them our freedom, our liberty

( Song )*

Europe in the dark age, was swept by an ignorant plague
While Ireland was known for poets, scholars, and saints

Invaders, would have Éire destroyed while only hurting themselves
For it was the Celts, who taught poetry to ancient Greece

    They tried to burn her culture down
    But the ashes of Ireland proved fertile ground
    Green is the pearl, seed of the vine; great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht

Beaten, almost forgotten she was
Her sons sent off to the colonies
And Ná Fíle; her poets, became beggars in the streets

    They tried to burn her culture down
    But the ashes of Ireland proved fertile ground

Thank you Lady Gregory!
Thank you A.E.!
Thank you Will. B. Yeats!
Thank you Ó Rathaile, Ó Carolan too!
Thank you Mr. Synge!
Thank you most of all Douglas Hyde

    Green is the pearl, seed of the vine; great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht

    They tried to burn her culture down
    But the ashes of Ireland proved fertile ground

Thank you Lady Gregory!
Thank you A.E.!
Thank you Will. B. Yeats!
Thank you Ó Rathaile, Ó Carolan too!
Thank you Mr. Synge!

Thank you Standish Ó Grady, and Pearse!
Thank you Connolly, James!
Thank you Merriman, Ferguson too!
Thank you Rua Ó Súlleabháin!
Thank you James Clarence Mangan!
Thank you Tommy Davis!
Thank you most of all Douglas Hyde!

    Of all the nations of the world
    Only Ireland's dream is a poet's dream
    Green is the pearl, seed of the vine; great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht
    Great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht

Although far removed from the great Sahara I by chance met Saharazad in the market place she
Wore white she registered from cute to beautiful excuse the personal reference but this is all
About feelings I wore brown it is another way to be invisible weight is the greatest disconnect
You are truly ignored in school I was known as the class clown at home I was the life of the
Party even when I took computer classes I just reverted back talking out loud having the
Teacher laughing too this time but as I said before as a searcher you can’t be joining everything
In eight years I have been to my family’s home three times and one of those times was because
I got a false report that one of them had died sadness and loneliness is a requirement to see
And pearse the inner world of the soul you truly must be on the outside so let me continue to
Relate this lovely creature I happened upon her smile could cause a minor accident gorgeous it
Was just short of jumping on a carousel but better all the color and lights and music was
Emanating from her loveliness her white attire only increased the pleasure isn’t that what you
See worn a lot when one dances to the Viennese Waltz just showing you what you miss and
Don’t see such gentle beating of the heart from a human fount and then she speaks and the
Music begins brick and asphalt you have never been so blessed then you mix in sky and sun it’s
An experience to die for eyes of wonder you bring down the thunder and without doubt the
Attending mist to the eyes the mind you stand in one place but your back in years gone by she
Was wonderful then now she is dreamy truly the stuff that dreams are made of oh God
Consecrate these dreams to immortal feats and deeds make those that feel so alone they are
Being fooled and harmed by the enemy I have been in your school of instruction for a long time
And I attest these feelings and facts are sound Sarazard is more than imagination but she is the
Root and beauty of true life Thank you Father that she is my friend and I choose to share with
All who will read this if everything feels mundane and worthless you are in a bad place where
Lies Are ruling come and be free I can’t give you her address but I have shown her unmasked
And the realness of the person that she is blessings to her and you

I
And that was the summer flowers
Came and gone
The pink patterned petals, fallen at long last  
Who did Christen the soft and the soil and the muck and the dirt
On which white frost now could  settle for the coming tunnel days

And still I haven't quite yet made up my mind
Torn between the two or three flickers
Of dim candle
shined on walls in cold catacombs
This is but the ideal of worlds

II
Along Grotty streets of Dublin
Once did I ponder down
That time I brought you down to Smithfield  
To fix the broken bicycle tyre
Up of lanes and smoke in air
Where ancients once did stroll
Along about the cobblestone towns
And the general cry from merchant carts

On these same streets did not Pearse declare his oath?
To Men who shall give their blood for Ireland's last remaining somber notes of song
Well now romantic Ireland's truly dead and gone
The wakes been hundred years now passed
And alone in one smoke filled alley I did stop in the cold to think things over

III
Thoughts they did come during December
On that morning of your funeral
that was I there in my black coat, red scarf and against myself
such morbid spirits for the season
I did sit at that last wooden bench  Father whispered of Himself our lord
Took I to bread and wine
And Peaked inside your Coffin
Only then have I truly felt grief

Such a friendly Barman from McBrides
Who joined me in a well deserved pint that afternoon
Full of pure ***** was he
Perhaps thrown off by my pale skin and red eyes
said to sail away to Asia
Said it was the best thing for to do
As Buddhist Monks on high up hills did know a think or two
But I would not walk such mountains tops to get you off my mind
All I needed was a little time
that would clear it all away

IV
And I awayed to look for peace
Across sea and land
To the hustle and bustle
Of a snow logged London
And that once more was I
At the districts tall and to Oxford street
Where tender never seemed so sweet
You and I had not been here
For penny drops fell without my say so
Slipping into grates
where no man would dare to fish for even the leanest of supper

And went I to a darkened flat
to give up for another night
The gruffest of London would put
even New York city to shame
And with Face clean and new again
researching merry streets
I watched as Steam did rise
from chimney pots up on high red roofs
And Wishing such dark troubles  would too flow away
I did peer down at my silver watch
Scratched face and sixth punch
And after a famous sigh
Wandered on to dock

V
Did not once you stop and think about the minute hand?
The slow and dropping sigh
or groan of the past
I certainly did
As shy as clockwork you were
perhaps love was not your game
Or was it was just me that turned you away?
And that was winter
Thoughts gone
thoughts passed

Then I couldn't even see the edges of everything that was wrong
Until I stopped to think

VI
And that was the bright light
a dark December night  
And me burst with hell flames
Grabbed my grey jumper with one hand
taken outside to drive
I just needed some time to get things off my mind
And if I did not fall
one bump one slide
As sweet time stood on head
If only I could have died in that moment
But that was you gone
No more lessons or sighs
No more slow afternoons
Just a handful of years for me
To be alone in December

And for all our great restless wanderings
There is nothing more to give
That was the end  
And if I was not me
I would journey on
In my own imperfect death