Brie Encounter by Brian bilston
the skies are gruyere since she left me
i’ve never felt so danish blue
caught between a roquefort and a hard cheese,
i stilton’t know what to do
don’t give edam about the future
now my babybel’s walked out the door
can’t believe i’ve double gloucester
i camembert it any more
i’ve ricotta get myself together
and build my life back caerphilly
cheddar tear for the final time
say goodbye to us and halloumi
Anyone else got the new MDH poetry to music yet?. Its sensational!
I’ll be murdered here but this is extraordinarily beautiful IMO.
Perfect for a gaeilgeoir like yourself, but translated into English as well.
It’s a Louis DePaor poem mixed with the John Spillane song
Everybody should read this at least once a year
Death of an Irishwoman
Ignorant, in the sense
she ate monotonous food
and thought the world was flat,
and pagan, in the sense
she knew the things that moved
at night were neither dogs nor cats
but púcas and darkfaced men,
she nevertheless had fierce pride.
But sentenced in the end
to eat thin diminishing porridge
in a stone-cold kitchen
she clenched her brittle hands
around a world
she could not understand.
I loved her from the day she died.
She was a summer dance at the crossroads.
She was a card game where a nose was broken.
She was a song that nobody sings.
She was a house ransacked by soldiers.
She was a language seldom spoken.
She was a child’s purse, full of useless things.
© 1975, The Estate of Michael Hartnett
That is as good a line as I’ve ever read.
“I loved her from the day she died” is the kernel of it
Thats deadly
There’s some knock out lines in that poem,goes perfectly with the song
Dont we love everyone from the day they die?
From Dublin town came a flyer named Jim
Who’s Áras chances they were grim
He withheld a lads rent
Made him live in a tent
We all then knew that he was just dim.
Jim Gavin thought he had the Áras in the bank
Among Irish aviators, he was first rank
Micheál Martin and Fianna Fáil, he wanted to thank
Some of us thought it was a prank.
Then Jim on the telly looked like a plank
He sounded more and more like Apres Match Frank
And lost more and more votes the more Roy drank
And the voters left the Gavin box blank.
None of those Limericks flow 
The Sunday Game
By Dennis O’Driscoll
September 5, 2011
How alive, how excitable
they were back then,
when they congregated
in the neighbor’s kitchen
for the Sunday game:
the one neighbor with TV.
Every spot is occupied: painted form,
squat milking stool, squeaky
Morris Minor seat, with vinyl trim,
reincarnated as a sofa.
They get stuck in: loud wheezy cheers,
blunt denunciations of the ref . . .
Tension so immense that if
a Cathay Pacific jumbo chanced
to touch down on the dung-plated,
sun-saturated farmyard
not one would cast a living
glance in its direction.
Except, that is, the woman of
the house: she lifts the kettle off
the hob again, fills it from a shaded
bucket, the summer-blistered
hall door open to all comers.
No questions asked.
Maggie thatchers favourite poem apparently, it’s good
No Enemies
You have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
Charles Mackay
Thanks, I wonder did it inspire Teddy Roosevelts ‘Man in the Arena’
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat
That was what came to my mind as well
