Patrick Kavanagh is one of Ireland's greatest and national poets. He was from a country background and he loved writing about Nature. He was very spiritual and so is his wonderful poetry. I love his simple humble writing style. Here are some poems by Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967).
ADVENT
We have tested and tasted too much, lover --
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.
And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.
O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning --
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour --
And Christ comes with a January flower.
A STAR
Beauty was that
Far vanishing flame,
Call it a star
Wanting better name.
And gaze and gaze
Vaguely until
Nothing is left
Save a grey ghost-hill.
Here wait I
On the world's rim
Stretching out hands
To Seraphim.
ASCETIC
That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind.
That I may break
With these hands
The bread of wisdom that grows
In the other lands.
For this, for this
Do I wear
The rags of hunger and climb
The unending stair.
BEECH TREE
I planted in February
A bronze-leafed beech,
In the chill brown soil
I spread out its silken fibres.
Protected it from the goats
With wire netting
And fixed it firm against
The worrying wind.
Now it is safe, I said,
April must stir
My precious baby
To greenful loveliness.
It is August now, I have hoped
But I hope no more --
My beech tree will never hide sparrows
From hungry hawks.
CANAL BANK WALK
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
EPIC
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel --
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
GOLD WATCH
Engraved on the case
House and mountain
And a far mist
Rising from faery fountain.
On inner case
No. 2244
Elgin Nath. . . .
Sold by a guy in a New York store.
Dates of repairs
1914 M.Y., 1918 H.J.,
She has had her own cares.
Slender hands
Of blue steel,
And within the precious
Platinum balance wheel.
Delicate mechanism
Counting out in her counting-house
My pennies of time.
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily
Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday --
You meet me and you say:
"Don't forget to see about the cattle --"
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.
And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life --
And I see us meeting at the end of a town
On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.
O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us -- eternally.
INNISKEEN ROAD: JULY EVENING
The bicycles go by in twos and threes --
There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.
I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation,
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation;
A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.
LINES WRITTEN ON A SEAT ON THE GRAND CANAL, DUBLIN
"Erected to the Memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien"
O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully.
Where by a lock Niagariously roars
The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands.
A swan goes by head low with many apologies,
Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges --
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns mythologies.
O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
Tomb -- just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.
MARY
Her name was poet's grief before
Mary, the saddest name
In all the litanies of love
And all the books of fame.
I think of poor John Clare's beloved
And know the blessed pain
When crusts of death are broken
And tears are blossomed rain.
And why should I lament the wind
Of chance that brought her here
To be an April offering
For sins my heart held dear.
And though her passing was for me
The death of something sweet,
Her name's in every prayer, her charm
In every face I meet.
MEMORY OF MY FATHER
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardiner Street
Stumble on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London.
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me
"I was once your father."
MY ROOM
10 by 12
And a low roof
If I stand by the side wall
My head feels the reproof.
Five holy pictures
Hang on the walls:
The Virgin and Child
St. Anthony of Padua
Leo the XIII
St Patrick and the Little Flower.
My bed in the centre
So many things to me --
A dining table
A writing desk
And a slumber palace.
My room in a dusty attic
But its little window
Lets in the stars.
PLOUGHMAN
I turn the lea-green down
Gaily now,
And paint the meadow brown
With my plough.
I dream with silvery gull
And brazen crow.
A thing that is beautiful
I may know.
Tranquillity walks with me
And no care.
O, the quiet ecstasy
Like a prayer.
I find a star-lovely art
In a dark sod.
Joy that is timeless! O heart
That knows God!
STONY GREY SOIL
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved:
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick-tongued mumble.
You told me the plough was immortal!
O green life-conquering plough!
Your mandril strained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.
You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food.
You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!
Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I still stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisoned pen
His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.
Mullahinsha, Drummeril, Black Shanco --
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.
THE INTANGIBLE
Rapt to starriness -- not quite
I go through fields and fens of night,
The nameless, the void
Where ghostly poplars whisper to
A silent countryside.
Not black or blue,
Grey or red or tan
The skies I travel under.
A strange unquiet wonder.
Indian
Vision and Thunder.
Splendours of Greek,
Egypt's cloud-woven glory
Speak no more, speak
Speak no more
A thread-worn story.
TO A BLACKBIRD
O pagan poet you
And I are one
In this -- we lose our god
At set of sun.
And we are kindred when
The hill wind shakes
Sweet song like blossoms on
The calm green lakes.
We dream while Earth's sad children
Go slowly by
Pleading for our conversion
With the Most High.
TO A CHILD
Child do not go
Into the dark places of soul,
For there the grey wolves whine,
The lean grey wolves.
I have been down
Among the unholy ones who tear
Beauty's white robe and clothe her
In rags of prayer.
Child there is light somewhere
Under a star,
Sometime it will be for you
A window that looks
Inward to God.
(c) Patrick Kavanagh 1904-1967
We have tested and tasted too much, lover --
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.
And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.
O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning --
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour --
And Christ comes with a January flower.
A STAR
Beauty was that
Far vanishing flame,
Call it a star
Wanting better name.
And gaze and gaze
Vaguely until
Nothing is left
Save a grey ghost-hill.
Here wait I
On the world's rim
Stretching out hands
To Seraphim.
ASCETIC
That in the end
I may find
Something not sold for a penny
In the slums of Mind.
That I may break
With these hands
The bread of wisdom that grows
In the other lands.
For this, for this
Do I wear
The rags of hunger and climb
The unending stair.
BEECH TREE
I planted in February
A bronze-leafed beech,
In the chill brown soil
I spread out its silken fibres.
Protected it from the goats
With wire netting
And fixed it firm against
The worrying wind.
Now it is safe, I said,
April must stir
My precious baby
To greenful loveliness.
It is August now, I have hoped
But I hope no more --
My beech tree will never hide sparrows
From hungry hawks.
CANAL BANK WALK
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
EPIC
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel --
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
GOLD WATCH
Engraved on the case
House and mountain
And a far mist
Rising from faery fountain.
On inner case
No. 2244
Elgin Nath. . . .
Sold by a guy in a New York store.
Dates of repairs
1914 M.Y., 1918 H.J.,
She has had her own cares.
Slender hands
Of blue steel,
And within the precious
Platinum balance wheel.
Delicate mechanism
Counting out in her counting-house
My pennies of time.
IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily
Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday --
You meet me and you say:
"Don't forget to see about the cattle --"
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.
And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life --
And I see us meeting at the end of a town
On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.
O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us -- eternally.
INNISKEEN ROAD: JULY EVENING
The bicycles go by in twos and threes --
There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.
I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation,
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation;
A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.
LINES WRITTEN ON A SEAT ON THE GRAND CANAL, DUBLIN
"Erected to the Memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien"
O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully.
Where by a lock Niagariously roars
The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands.
A swan goes by head low with many apologies,
Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges --
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns mythologies.
O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
Tomb -- just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.
MARY
Her name was poet's grief before
Mary, the saddest name
In all the litanies of love
And all the books of fame.
I think of poor John Clare's beloved
And know the blessed pain
When crusts of death are broken
And tears are blossomed rain.
And why should I lament the wind
Of chance that brought her here
To be an April offering
For sins my heart held dear.
And though her passing was for me
The death of something sweet,
Her name's in every prayer, her charm
In every face I meet.
MEMORY OF MY FATHER
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardiner Street
Stumble on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London.
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me
"I was once your father."
MY ROOM
10 by 12
And a low roof
If I stand by the side wall
My head feels the reproof.
Five holy pictures
Hang on the walls:
The Virgin and Child
St. Anthony of Padua
Leo the XIII
St Patrick and the Little Flower.
My bed in the centre
So many things to me --
A dining table
A writing desk
And a slumber palace.
My room in a dusty attic
But its little window
Lets in the stars.
PLOUGHMAN
I turn the lea-green down
Gaily now,
And paint the meadow brown
With my plough.
I dream with silvery gull
And brazen crow.
A thing that is beautiful
I may know.
Tranquillity walks with me
And no care.
O, the quiet ecstasy
Like a prayer.
I find a star-lovely art
In a dark sod.
Joy that is timeless! O heart
That knows God!
STONY GREY SOIL
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved:
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick-tongued mumble.
You told me the plough was immortal!
O green life-conquering plough!
Your mandril strained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.
You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food.
You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!
Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I still stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisoned pen
His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.
Mullahinsha, Drummeril, Black Shanco --
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.
THE INTANGIBLE
Rapt to starriness -- not quite
I go through fields and fens of night,
The nameless, the void
Where ghostly poplars whisper to
A silent countryside.
Not black or blue,
Grey or red or tan
The skies I travel under.
A strange unquiet wonder.
Indian
Vision and Thunder.
Splendours of Greek,
Egypt's cloud-woven glory
Speak no more, speak
Speak no more
A thread-worn story.
TO A BLACKBIRD
O pagan poet you
And I are one
In this -- we lose our god
At set of sun.
And we are kindred when
The hill wind shakes
Sweet song like blossoms on
The calm green lakes.
We dream while Earth's sad children
Go slowly by
Pleading for our conversion
With the Most High.
TO A CHILD
Child do not go
Into the dark places of soul,
For there the grey wolves whine,
The lean grey wolves.
I have been down
Among the unholy ones who tear
Beauty's white robe and clothe her
In rags of prayer.
Child there is light somewhere
Under a star,
Sometime it will be for you
A window that looks
Inward to God.
(c) Patrick Kavanagh 1904-1967
