A Terrible Beauty

 

He’ll leave to take his Harvard postgraduate,

this harvest, see perhaps one last time,

straw bales gathered in from green fields,
birds swooping over heathered mountains,
the sun high in the blue sky.

 

This land is beautiful but I feel

no connection to it, he laments and sings
the lyrics of Fields of Athenry.
we had dreams and songs to sing.
Where once we watched the small free birds fly

His Trinity degree, has earned
him two jobs, one on a Centra shop till,
the other as a removal man.
now we deal mainly with evictions,
he mourns.

Children of the construction boom,
Other Dublin friends fear they’ll never work
again, one quotes poetry.
Ireland has changed utterly, changed utterly,
a terrible beauty is born.

Reviews

[arbitrary jane]

evictions, indeed.

it is always bewildering to me how i can be so yearn-fully nostalgic for things i have never had. this is brilliant. i can stand with you in the fields that aren't, whipped by the wind blowing down from the mountains, backed by blue; and feel the burden of them. of all the things we've lost.

[SpokenWord]

I think changes come in every ten years or so and if you don't notice them as they are happening then the changes seem drastic. This change is like no other I have experience and I see even there people are suffering. Great write.

[emmajoy]

Everywhere has changed utterly: trust and kindness, progress and hope .. dreams shattered, peace gone to the wall, we live in near permanent tragedy.
Your poem shows a sad, sad look at how things are in Ireland .. a country of wonderful tales and music players, academics and dream makers; to offer so little to one of its own is a near criminal act, sending the cream to another country's coffee.
To move from, '. one last time, straw bales gathered in from green fields, birds swooping over heathered mountains,' to: '. changed utterly, a
terrible beauty is born.' is heartbreaking.

Exquisite writing, thoughts to mull over ..

[Jibey]

Echoes of Yeats and of days of joyful exhileration - and then the crash...

[Emily B]

this makes my heart ache for the land of my ancestors