The Parting Glass

The Parting Glass – an Irish farewell

The Parting Glass is a beautiful example of that particular gift the Irish seem to have in abundance – being able to combine joy and sorrow in a way that is both sad yet wonderfully uplifting at the same time.

Parting Glass

It’s a song of farewell, sung for and to close friends. It conjures up the same feeling as Shakespeare’s “parting is such sweet sorrow”.

It may make you cry, but in a moving and life-affirming way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhJp0W0ku2w    The High Kings sing "The Parting Glass"

Paula Meehan, My favourite poet

Well

 


I know this path by magic not by sight.
Behind me on the hillside the cottage light
is like a star that’s gone astray. The moon

is waning fast, each blade of grass a rune

inscribed by hoarfrost. This path’s well worn.

I lug a bucket by bramble and blossoming blackthorn.
I know this path by magic not by sight.

Next morning when I come home quite unkempt

I cannot tell what happened at the well.

You spurn my explanation of a sex spell

cast by the spirit who guards the source

that boils deep in the belly of the earth,

even when I show you what lies strewn

in my bucket — a golden waning moon,

seven silver stars, our own porch light,

your face at the window staring into the dark.




http://irishwritingblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/paula-meehan-reads-her-poem-well-live-from-the-cuirt-international-festival-of-literature/


Take the time to listen to Paula Meehan read this poem

For my late Mother on Mother's Day

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. 

Patrick Kavanagh

Always loved and never forgotten

A green graveyard in county Wexford

Woodland Burial Poem By Pam Ayres

Don't lay me in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall
Where the dust of ancient bones has spread a dryness over all,
Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold
Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.
There kindly and affectionately, plant a native tree
To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.
The roots will not disturb me as they wend their peaceful way
To build the fine and bountiful, from closure and decay.
To seek their small requirements so that when their work is done
I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the sun.

http://www.greengraveyard.com/

Ireland's only natural burial grounds,sounds just right for me.

Sir Thomas's Bridge Clonmel

Recent floods and storms in Clonmel

Marlfield Lake Clonmel Tipperary : Star Trail