Poetry Forum

Apologies all round ... my mind has been much in Dublin during this month after my return and I felt a need, more an overpowering urge, to rewrite and put these two poems together, with appended commentary and links, as much for the sake of unwonted tidiness as anything else. Original versions can be found further (and way further) down the list. If the presumption bothers you, as well it may, just ignore, There are hundreds if not thousands of other and better poems to read instead: just put it down to an eccentric and possibly objectionable form of housekeeping ... B.

Poems should be able to speak for themselves without any prompts or preparations. Skip over the commentary below, then, if you wish, and go straight to the poems.

--------------------------------------

Easter 1916 is a pivotal date in modern Irish history. This failed rebellion, a foredoomed blood sacrifice in that the participants knew in advance they had no chance of winning, occurred at Easter, the annual commemoration, not coincidentally, of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ. The rebellion thus set up a mystical parallel in the minds of an exceptionally pious public – then if not now -- and has come to represent the foundation myth of Irish independence.

There is a certain amount of truth to this generally accepted opinion, but it is my own view (shared by a number of historians, iconoclasts, and more than a few writers -- notably the playwright Sean O’Casey, who lived through the events he later wrote about) that the state which finally emerged from the turmoil of the post-World War One era was a far cry indeed from the republic proclaimed by the poets, visionaries, socialists, romantic nationalists, feminists, anti-clericals, progressives, proto-communists and all-round oddballs who gave us 1916.

The two poems that follow operate on superficially similar yet contrasting lines. The first (written in 2004-05, revised 2007) concentrates exclusively on the morning of Day One just as the Rising is about to begin and is comprised almost entirely of dialogue. The second (written in September, 2010, after revisiting Dublin and sites connected with the rebellion in August) covers a longer period and is more reportorial in tone, with interjections of commentary and internal monologue. Both employ an anecdotal format mixing real and fictional characters, with shifts in language from the standard to the vernacular, yet follow closely the events which actually took place from April 23-29, the week in which the Rising took place.

Finally, a series of links has been appended – including a Slideshow to provide a visual dimension – for the benefit of readers who would like to find out more about what really happened, why it happened, and something more about the personalities involved.

----------------------------------------------------

Dublin: the Easter holiday weekend of the year 1916. The armies of Europe have been engaged in unprecedented mutual slaughter since the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, and casualties on all sides have reached horrendous proportions. Ireland, an unwilling and reluctant component of the UK, has managed to avoid conscription so far although about 300,000 of its young men have already joined the British Army as volunteers, some from conviction but many more as a drastic means of avoiding endemic widespread unemployment. The war seems far away as the better-off people of the city think about family picnics or maybe a day at the races. Unbeknown to them, other deeply-rooted forces are stirring. One young Dub comes off his night work and, by chance, runs into one of his pals on the streets ....


Joe McInerney

Who fears to speak
Of Easter Week?

There was I, shagged out,
shrugging off the midnight shift
and taking in the air of the morning,
when who should rise up before me
but the bould young Jimmy Docherty,
the man himself, ablaze in unaccustomed
splendour: Jayzus, Jim, says I,
suitably bedazzled, where in the name
of all that's holy, boy, -- and don’t ye
be keeping me in suspenders! --
where, in the Name of God, did ye
come by that ... martial uniform?

All bought and paid for,
says Jimmy, beaming,
amn't I after payin
two shillins a week
to the Countess, like?
Ah, the Countess, says I,
would that be yer wan?
O, the very article, says he.
Fierce woman, I'm told.
O, dreadful indeed.
No chance of a look-in?
Haha, laughs Jimmy,
put that thought behind you,
la di feckin da!

Aye, then, so I'm told,
but what is it, then, has yourself
abroad, so resplendent,
on this fine Easter Monday?
Tis a parade, says Jimmy,
ourselves and the Volunteers,
a march from Liberty Hall
with a stop at the GPO.
One in the eye to the English,
says I, here in the midst
of their Great Big War?
God send they lose,
says he with a serious look.
Sure, let them all be kilt,
says I, more power to them,
the less o' them Prooshians,
the less o' them Brits the better.

Is that what you really believe,
asks Jimmy, alert, half smiling.
Well, and why wouldn't I?
You'll come along with me, so?
Whither away? A step down the road,
a short wee stroll from Liberty Hall,
then a sharp right wheel to the GPO.
Ten minutes will do me no harm,
says I, then it's home to the flat,
to the rashers and sausages.
O Jayz, you're a fearful man
for the feed, says Jimmy.

Is that a real rifle, says I,
or a bloody good imitation?
O, tis real enough, says he,
with real little bullets inside it.
Down with the British Empire!
says I, with a happy grin.
Upon which the sun never sets,
cries Jimmy with a laugh.
For God, we both roar out together,
won't trust them in the dark!
Well, tis a fine day for it,
says I ; Sure, today, says Jim,
is a day that will live forever!
Are ye cracked or what, man,
today will run its course
much the same as any other:
the gentry will go out to the races,
and I’ll toddle home to me tea,
and we'll all wake up tomorrow
under the same oul' Union Jack!

We might, says Jimmy,
and then again, we might not.
But will yeh look over there!
Who in the name of Jayzus,
says I, is that precious article?
Tis Patrick Pearse, says he,
known to himself if none other
as Padraig O Piarsach in Irish.
Go ‘way! Och, indeed, the very man,
says Jim, another half-caste English
sleveen, bent on teaching the Irish
how to be Irish. Ah, to be sure, Jim,
but isn’t that the way of them, boyo?
Have a look at him now, take a gander,
see him shaking at the knees, suppressing
his posh Southside accent, reading out
the Proclamation of the Republic!

A sudden chill came over me,
a quick prickle of apprehension:
Jim, says I … is this the real McCoy?
Tis as real as ye like, Joe, says he,
so off ye go, get yourself home to yer tea.
Would yeh hang on a sec, there, Jimmy … !
He was gone, he had crossed the road,
where the windows were being smashed in
and an armed company of soldiers,
Volunteers and Citizen Army,
went rushing into the building.

I hesitated, perplexed, uneasy,
facing the thought of the long walk home.
I went three steps then rushed in after them.

---------------------------------------

Easter Week


All is changed, changed utterly,
A terrible beauty is born.
-- W.B. Yeats


Idiots, really,
drunk on oratory and illusions:
a poet's rebellion with real bullets.

I love how they went to the tailors,
taking fittings for fine new uniforms,
tunics and belts to be buried in.

It was the style of the thing --
sauntering out, sartorially splendid,
at lunchtime on a public holiday.

Christ is crucified.
Christ is risen.
Christ will live again.

A sidelong smirk, a furtive wave,
Jayzus, Jim, and what’s the craic?
Can’t talk, Joe, I’m on Parade!

The GPO. Left Wheel! Attack!
Look here, young fella, do you mind,
Amn’t I next in the queue for stamps!

Kindly leave the premises, madam:
Volunteer Muldoon! On yer bike, missus,
G’wan, get away on out of it.

Run up the flag, the Plough and Stars!
Read out the lengthy Proclamation!
Ehh?? ... Whass that he’s after sayin’?

Jayz, here come the bloody Lancers!
Clippety-clop along the cobblestones:
Volunteers! Five rounds rapid -- Fire!

O God, dey do be dead!
Bear up, Muldoon, they are the enemy.
Feck the sojers, sorr, deh horses!

Agnus Dei
qui tollis peccata mundi

The English are capitalists, says Connolly,
they would never destroy public property!
Soon the shells rain down on the central city.

Machine guns, snipers, rake the roadsteads,
and in little heaps, in shapeless huddled rags,
stray civilians collapse in the crossfire.

Explosions, the zing and ring and ping
of bullets caroming off the stonework:
Hoowa! Heeya, ya hoor, ya missed!

Fires take hold, walls grow hot, begin to glow,
the ceiling burns, sags, starts to collapse:
ammunition low, the boys keep banging away.

We must charge the barricades, cries Connolly!
Shoulda stopped in the pub, thinks Muldoon:
Ehh, could we not, like, crawl behind them, sorr?

Hippety-hop, out one of the side doors,
as bullets spark on the flags of Henry Street:
a skip and a jump and a dive into Henry Lane.

Fires all around, bullets at every crossroad,
sandbag redoubts at the end of each street:
The O’Rahilly leaps up and leads a charge

but they’re all knocked over, bowled like skittles,
bleeding, groaning, beside the upturned market barrows
among cabbage leaves, turnips, cauliflowers.

It’s then that a bemused Commandant Pearse,
after seven days of ceaseless noise and slaughter,
concludes the time has come to pack things in.

But how to get the English to stop firing?
White flags have been no help to the poor civilians,
nor even the sad appeasement of Union Jacks.

The Army over time has gone wild and feral,
enraged by the sting of huge, unexpected losses,
it means to impose its revenge on this rebel City.

Let me try, says the nurse, Elizabeth O’Farrell,
and with a fierce fling, a wave of her Red Cross flag,
she now boldly steps out in the street …

And the English hold their fire.
Silence: Christ is on the Cross.

What follows is a tale of the times:
General Lowe, the British Officer Commanding,
cannot accept surrender from a woman!

Three hours later, the whole thing’s over,
and we can see the blurred but famous photo:
Pearse surrenders to General Lowe.

All over. So quixotic, so silly,
such a desperate hopeless military fling
in the face of a furious Empire

Who were none too bloody pleased
at this stab in the back, as they saw it,
in the midst of a War they were losing!

Comes the question of retribution,
and with it comes the turning point,
when England loses Ireland forever.

With their city thrown into flaming ruins,
the populace is enraged, not with the English,
but with these home-grown damn'd fanatics!

When the prisoners are led to the docks
the whole city turns out to jeer and pelt them:
Look at yez now, yeh bleedin’ bowsies!

England has only to be calm and cool,
to be reassuring, play on the prevailing mood,
but opts instead for savage executions.

First there is silent and stunned disbelief,
whispered murmurings, a stirring of anger,
and then the photographs begin to appear.

Images of the executed leaders proliferate,
first in private homes, then in gathering places,
then in public places throughout the land.

The troops go angrily tearing them down
and the well-known stubborn streak comes out,
the mood of the whole country changes.

The lads fought a fair fight, stood up to them,
and were good clean-living boys, the most of them.
No need to go shooting them down like animals!

Christ is Crucified.
Christ is Risen.
Christ Will Live Again.

When I think of the men of 1916
I wish I had been one among them,
racing, giddily, down to the barricades

and fighting for Ireland, in no way dying,
(Muldoon muddled through, fair play)
but dodging the bullets, hoop-la, having the craic,

living on ever after in a life of reflected glory:
boring the bloody socks off people in the pub,
cadging drinks on the strength of borrrowed history

for ever and ever and ever. Amen.

----------------------------------
Links

Dublin Slideshow:
http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openThe ... d0d0a&sb=1

General:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising
Blog: http://dublinerinjapan.blogspot.jp/2005 ... -1916.html

Media:

- Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/focus/easterrising/
- BBC (non-Irish source) : http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/ea ... ndex.shtml

- Original Documents & Photographs (National Library of Ireland):
http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdfs.html

Finally, a commemorative poem by WB Yeats:
http://www.online-literature.com/frost/779/

I wonder if you need 1916 in both titles as this would reference the Easter week and help the reader fix the time and place? The first part felt more like prose, especially towards the end, but the second part was more poetic, although both are in your very distinct style, which is good as it fixes the poet to a certain form in people's minds, although obviously writing in say - blank verse - would add to the technical side. You might want to consider this as even free verse has to have as a basis metrical rhythm in order to differentiate between prose and poetry. Having said this would I be wrong to call this prose poetry? Does it matter, well no, unless you are a purist. I would imagine this as part of a much longer work, on the scale of say The Prelude and the focus on the characters here. The conversational part bothers me slightly. Difficult to do in this form and I wonder if italics for the talking to help the reader and avoid too many he said. As always I like very much the feel for the times and the characters which come across as entirely believable. I have written a book of prose poems, (April's Poems) which have their roots in Ireland and you have inspired me to get them out and dust them!

Thanks as always, c-bow. The thing (in this case, things) has/have to work or not on its (their) own inner-generated flow and energy. Two cheers for clunky English grammar. Anyway, that's always the problem. I'm reading this to a cold audience because there's a lot of (unfamiliar) historical background and even when apprised of it a lot of people will say, So What? I could be reading this to an audience at home in Dublin and they would be roaring and cheering and climbing up the chandeliers. This is not quite as exaggerated as it sounds because I got great responses to the public reading of other 'Irish' poems at home last month, when I hadn't actually written this one (well, the second one) yet.

Maybe it's not a good thing to get involved in controversial topics such as nationalism and it's roots and feelings. Nevertheless, it's there. I've been involved with it one way or another since I was a child. It's just as valid as other themes such as love, religion, sorcery, death, necromancy, ecology, phrenology, biology, geology, ... and, lately, the serious pursuit of stupidity. You think I'm joking? No, unfortunately ... ignorance has become a haven for people who simply don't want to think.

All the best,
Brendan

I think the audience in Ireland is very different and perhaps unique in that the memories seem near not far away. Peace? I suppose due to better economic times I think Ireland started to look out rather than in? The young anyway. Sadly those times seem to have vaporised and the burden of debt will no doubt raise social problems which in turn raises political issues, which in turn reminds how near the memories are. I can imagine your poems are received like a rallying call; Ireland does not forget her past. Over here in GB the audience is very different and we tend to view Irish history like we view Cromwell - from a great distance. Northern Ireland may have pre-occupied but with Iraq and Afganistan other news gets side-lined and we don't seem to hark back to the days of the empire and the injuctices of earlier times? Ireland remembers, England forgets Anyway, I think your poems would be perfectly understood in Ireland, but I would wish them a wider audience.

Brenden,

This isn’t the sort of narrative that fits well with poetry. That may account for Clara saying that it reads like prose. Unlike Clara I can’t see much poetical in the second poem. And I think Easter 1916 is the worst thing that Yeats ever wrote.

Whilst I appreciate the amount of work that went in to constructing these pieces I have to say that they have little to merit them as poetry.

But even as a piece of creative writing I found much of this embarrassing. The topic itself is another chapter in the romantic history of Irish failure and has been done to death and this adds nothing to understanding The Uprising.

I found the characters to be caricature in the extreme: full of innocent (childish, even) ideals as if to counter them against the materialist Ireland of the so-called (albeit, toothless) Celtic Tiger. It is the use of vernacular that really made me cringe. ‘Jayzus’ for example is something that you might hear in America but in the Irish (and both sides of the Dublin divide) the first syllable has a higher sound, so it would be more realistic to use ‘Jeez-us’ both syllables having equal strength. And ‘amt’ belongs in the mouths of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The Irish pronouncement would be ‘arnt’. ‘Sojers’ is more at home in Glaswegian than in Dublin.

Some of the vernacular reads straight off the pages of James Joyce. It should be borne in mind that Joyce came from the middle-class of Dublin and was prone to making ordinary Dubliners sound . . . well . . . thick!

That isn’t to denigrate Joyce. Like all of us he was a product of his time and environment; even though he was a revolutionary literate.

I’m at a loss as to why you put so much work into this. Even the last stanza (which is supposed to provide some sort of moral) fails as no one in Ireland really gives a damn about the Uprising (or Catholicism, for that matter. Relatively speaking), not even in the pub on Bachelor Walk.

For me the characterisation (and whilst I see what you mean Denis) works because like Dickens (and his books were full of caricatures) by using this literary device you can draw the reader in who will either have sympathy or repugnance and his characters were set against a certain society and were contrary to what those times thought they stood for. By using extremes you can jolt people to see truths rather than the opposit. Of course the Nazis twisted this device by representing the Jews as being sub-human, and with terrible consequences. I wouldn't think Irish people were stupid or thick based on this which is why I asked if this was going to be part of a much longer work where the characters could develop and be followed (so to speak). As for what the Uprising means to the Irish, I am not sure no one in Ireland really gives a damn about the Uprising? I suppose it is like saying we don't give a damn about Waterloo but is that true? I think there is probably more history relayed in Irish pubs than English classrooms and it isn't that we don't care - but more to do with how little we know of our own history! Anyway, I don't live in Ireland so I will have to bow to the knowledge of those that do.

Thanks to c-bow, rushing in to answer, but it's OK, thanks. I can understand the impatience of Denis Joe who thinks this is all a garrulous raising up of the ghosts of the past, and not only that, embarrassing! To whom, like? Here, D-J, is where I start to disagree with you.

Your visits to Ireland and your understanding of the country have been coloured by your domicile in Liverpool, admittedly one of the most Irish-y parts of the UK apart from, possibly, Glasgow. Dublin is close and easy to visit and here's me living 10,000 kilometers away (I checked the video thing on the plane flying back) but your identification and schooling and career path is in the UK with possibly some hairy moments during the Thatcher years. Nothing wrong with that. If you were clued-in, or glued-in to Ireland, you'd certainly know how to spell my name: a small thing but in its way, revealing.

This is not an oversimplified out-of-touch mournful exile's lament, like some tearful character sitting in the only pub in Woomarooma in the Australian outback and singing 'Galway Bay' over a table-full of empty tinnies.

I have very little interest in Yuppie Ireland. I never believed in it. Now the Celtic Tiger has crashed and we're back to to the things (complaining every step of the way!) that really matter. The reason Ireland works as a nation is because we are small enough that there is no real division between local and national politics. The thinking population as a whole is extremely politicized, one of the lasting features of our history. People are very much aware and intensely interested in what is going on around the country. Irish people identify with their country in a way which has been lost in Britain since the Second World War, and which cannot exist except in terms of symbols (the flag, the military) because of ongoing political divisions in the USA, geometrically expanding since the assassination of JFK, largely because of its sheer size and the fact that the modern Republic-cum-Empire is largely composed of immigrants over a period of four centuries and has no ancient history. Well, it does, but the Amerindians have been sidelined.

If you think the poem(s) suck, that's one thing. I can live with that. Every now and then I come up with something good; a lot of the time I write clunkers. I know that.

The vernacular language is not contrived: it's real. It's changing, sure. Now there is something called 'New Dublin' spoken by people born after 1970. I trust my ear. I know the way my grandfather talked, my great-uncles, and now my uncles and cousins. There is nothing fake about it. Nobody north of the Liffey says 'Jee-zus' with both syllables having equal strength: for the most part they say 'Ah, Jayz' or else, 'Fuckin Jayz' or else 'Jayz to night' ... whatever this latter is supposed to mean. 'Amn't' is recognised as illiterate and vulgar and none of my relations would dream of using it ... but you can be damn sure ('Jayz to night') it's still around: I heard it myself more than once this summer down on the Moore Street markets and also on the weekends along Thomas Street, the old Liberties, where thay have the street stalls out. Maybe you should come over with a tape recorder the next time you visit ... perhaps one of them digital thingies?

The main point is none of the above. We have lost the real meaning of 1916. We use it to justify everything that happened after: the conscription crisis, the force-feeding murder of Arthur Ashe, the 1918 election, the establishment of a separate parliament (Dail Eireann), the backlash, the War of Independence, the hunger-strike (later to come back again!) death of MacSwiney, the Black & Tans, the killing, Michael Collins and the Apostles, guerilla warfare in selected (very interesting!) parts of the country, deValera in America, the Customs House attack, the Truce ... deValera sending Collins to London! And then the Treaty and the bloody civil war that divided the country politically until 1990 and the election of Mary Robinson. All that stuff.

1916 gets lost in the telling. Call me a nationalist bastard, an idiot, a person who can't understand the accents of his own city, a thumping fool who can't write a decent poem. So far I don't mind. What I have been trying to do here is resurrect that single week in Dublin -- no matter what has been made of it later to fit political agendas, nor any of the stuff that has been written into textbooks to indoctrinate the young -- to pay simple homage to the men and to the many women who went out to fight for Ireland for reasons of love and for their idea of freedom in the almost certain knowledge that they had little or no chance of success, but that it was a thing worth doing anyway. This is what the poems are really about.

Best wishes,
Brendan