Ouch. My copy of The Green Fool is still on order (and I'm beginning to fear it may be too depressing to read.) In the meantime, I went looking for Kavanagh poems to read.

For those of you (us) who knew On Raglan Road as an isolated object, separated from the man or the environment, and pondered the writer's possible conceits, read this and weep:

SHANCODUFF

My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.

My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves

In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.
The sleety winds fondle the rushy beards of Shancoduff
While the cattle-drovers sheltering in the Featherna Bush
Look up and say: "Who owns them hungry hills
That the water-hen and snipe must have forsaken?
A poet? Then by heavens he must be poor."
I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?

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"O the rich beauty of the weeds in the ditches. . . . "
-P. Kavanagh "Tarry Flynn"

Line Breaks
added.
-Joe Offer-