IRISH LOVE POEMS
LOVE
My love is no year’s sentence.
It is a grief lodged under the skin,
Strength pushed beyond it’s bounds;
The four quarters of the world,
The highest point of heaven.
It is a heart breaking or
Battle with a ghost,
Striving under water,
Outrunning the sky or
Courting an echo.
So is my love, my passion
and my devotion
To him/her to whom I give them.
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT NIGHT
Do you remember that night
When you were at the window
With neither hat nor gloves
Nor coat to shelter you?
I reached out my hand to you
and you ardently grasped it,
I remained to converse with you
Until the lark began to sing.
Do you remember that night
That you and I were
At the foot of the rowan tree
And the night drifting snow?
Your head on my breast.
Do you remember that night? (to be read by audience member)
Do you remember that night? (to be read by audience member)
I now relate my sad tale,
That your soft, pleasant converse
Hath deprived me of heaven.
The fire is unraked
The light extinguished
The key under the door,
Do you softly draw it.
My mother is asleep,
But I am wide awake;
My fortune in my hand,
I am ready to go with you.
No. No.
Go, go, go back to the living.
(Songs from the Irish. Version Eugene O’Curry)
From Seán Ó Laoghaire, Cork, Ireland
As I'm in Cork I won't be able to attend the service or write something in pen for the Memory book. What I can contribute is the two poems which I read out during Distant Music [Cinemorphe].
When Romilly cast Milena she said she needed an Irish looking boy and after Milena's recommendation she cast me, and I'm truly grateful that she did as it was the highlight of my time in France and such a fantastic experience, I still enjoy the video of all of us singing White Christmas that's attached to one of these e-mails.
The first attachment are the poems I read out, in order, during the play. "Love" was what I repeated when Molly brought up groups of people to me, and Romilly told me afterwards that her father thought it was a particularly beautiful poem, and Do you remember that night is the poem I would read out at the end.
I went through my father's library and found the original poems in Irish. "Love" was original "Searc" a 9th Centuary old Irish poem, which was then translated into Modern Irish, while "An Cuimhne leat an Oíche Úd (Do you remember that night) was actually a poem I studied in University.
My thoughts are with you, Perry and all those with whom we shared the pleasure of knowing Romilly and I hope that our next meeting/correspondence will come on a less sorrowful occasion,
Seán