Poems I Journey With 8

Back in the good old days we had to learn many poems off by heart as learning by rote was still in the ascendant in the mid-seventies of the last century. Ireland has given birth to legions of poets, and the author I am celebrating here tonight, one Patrick Kavanagh remarked that at any one time our country could boast of a standing army of some 10,000 poets. W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella and Austin Clarke were the four major Irish poets we studied at school. Tonight I want to discuss Patrick Kavanagh's great poem "Stony Grey Soil" which we studied for our Leaving Certificate.

Patrick Kavanagh

Stony Grey Soil

O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.

You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick-tongued mumble.

You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life-conquering plough!
The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.

You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food

You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!

Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I still stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisoned pen

His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.

Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco -
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.

Commentary

Rare colour photo of Patrick Kavanagh

We all at one time or another have a love-hate relationship with the city,  town, village, townland or countryside where we were born.  We are never happy with our progress in life and we often blame our native place for the singular lack of opportunity it offered us as young people.  We also, of course, blame our family of origin which is naturally enough specifically rooted in our birthplace.  When I studied the Irish Gaelic language we were told that the great Irish Gaelic poet Seán Ó Ríordáin had a propensity to compose compound words or "chomhfhocail" as we called them in that language.  Kavanagh uses a similar technique in his poems by using his own compound or hyphenated words, viz., "clod-conceived," "thick-tongued" and "green-life-conquering." I especially liked, as a youngster studying this poem, Kavanagh's use of the literary devices of personification (where his Monaghan farm home is addressed directly as a person) and apostrophe (addressing someone or something that is simply not there in front of one). Also "Stony Grey Soil" is written in a form somewhat akin to that of the ballad as the poem contains stanzas of four lines each even though Kavanagh does not stick rigidly to the rhyming schemes of the traditional ballad.

However, for me the strongest feature of this poem, as of virtually all of Kavanagh's poetry, is the strength or force of his simple and direct imagery. Such strong imagery is evidenced practically in very line and indeed in the very title which occurs as a repeated line that has the effect of a chorus of lament.  A list of images is always easy to make in any poem by our author: "stony-grey soil," "gay child of my passion," "clod-conceived," "clogged," "stumble,"  "stride of Apollo," the named parts of the plough, "lea-field" and so on.  I shall not bore the reader with listing them for the whole poem as he or she can easily do that for themselves.

This poem is steeped in regret for his lost opportunities as a poet and as a human being since as a young man he dedicated himself to the land rather than to his métier as a poet or as a lover or suitor for young women.  The poem then becomes a lament for his predicament, that is, having wasted his youth.  That sentiment is stated very strongly and bitterly in the following lines packed with clear imagery:

O stony grey soil of Monaghan

You burgled my bank of youth!

I also particularly love the traditional format and nature of this poem.  It was long a tradition in Irish Gaelic poems to list off the names of townlands and towns as in the tradition of the "dindshenchus" as is exemplified in the final stanza.

Again, there are references to religion, God, but not the Church as in the following five lines:

Or write with unpoisoned pen

His name in these lonely verses

Or mention the dark fields where

The first gay flight of my lyric

Got caught in a peasant's prayer.

It is the "peasant's prayer" or natural or instinctive spirituality that appeals to Kavanagh. That is at once Pagan Celtic as well as Catholic or Christian.  Then there is the paradox that exists at the very heart of life, namely "dark fields" that might suggest something profoundly ungrounding and unnerving like the "dark night of the soul" and yet it is placed side by side with "the gay flight of his lyric" that somehow was caught up in a peasant's prayer rather than a poet's book of promise.

Finally the line "Dead loves that were born for me" is distinctly depressing and profoundly disturbing.  That the ballad format is used for this poem is also good as it is able to carry the lament and regret from his misspent youth and the lost opportunities he might have had, had he been luckier in life. 

Journal of a Soul 6

Cross on old ruined Church, Badolato Marina

The early Christians spoke of their being “in via,” or on the way to Heaven or the Kingdom of God.  In this last sentence, it is the beautiful and succinct Latin phrase “in via” that I want to highlight.  All cultures and all religions, which by definition are cultural phenomena, speak of the metaphor of travelling, or journeying or making a pilgrimage.  I have always liked those rather reflective and quirky Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, because they captured the lonely soul on his/her way or journey.  However, the Pilgrim in question is more often than not a very misguided soul, and yet the example stands in the sense of our travelling through the wilderness of life. In fact, in some of those Westerns the term “Pilgrim” is used quite frequently. 

In American literature and films, one gets the sense of the early Pioneers striking out into the unknown deserts, mountains and prairies in search of a “Promised Land” so to speak.  I have always felt that the case of the Native American Indian was never given fair treatment in 99% of those Westerns.  Indeed, in actuality, it appears to this rather ignorant writer on the far side of the great Atlantic Ocean that the poor Native American Indians got treated harshly, all too harshly by the so called enlightened early Pilgrims.  However, as I say, that is an uneducated view from afar.

Anyway, my point here is that the Spirituality of these Native Indians is very attractive and grounded in the cycles of the Seasons.  Theirs is a rich and pure spirituality with a wisdom all its own.  Again, over the years I have only got the vaguest glimpses of it in this or that rare film or in this or that rare novel.  Then, those of us in any way au fait with the Ecological or Green Movements in any of their incarnations will be very aware of the great speech of Chief Seattle which is quoted very frequently in such literature.



Lizard at the top of ruined church, Badolato

We are very much creatures of the earth, bound to the cycles of its movements about the great and sustaining Star called simply Sun.  As I type these few reflective words in the South of Italy the Sun is high, very warm and burning of the skin at some 32 degrees Centigrade.  There are no signs of the little lizards which come out along my back patio in some numbers in the calm of the less hot evenings.  As I sit and rejoice in this retreat time in the South far away from the colder Northern climes of Ireland, I am reminded here also of the closeness of humankind to the Seasons.  These are very much a peasant people here in the Mezzogiorno, a people who work slowly and surely to the patterns set down as paradigms by Nature.  These are a people in harmony with the world, just like the American Indian or like the Irish peasant, of whose origins I am proud to be.

It is so hard to have a spiritual sense in a large city.  Or as I remember reading somewhere once: it is hard to put down roots in a concrete jungle.  A lot of our cities, especially in the poorer quarters where human beings are forced to live shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball, one on top of another with very little “elbow room” as the great John Henry Cardinal Newman put it.  He was describing his freedom to research and his freedom to think for himself actually, but his words are lovely and indeed apt for our purposes here, are they not?  What little elbow room all those children have to be themselves in the modern concrete jungles of our cities.  This writer, as you have long since discovered, is a romantic and indeed a peasant – or countryman – at heart.  The words of a local woman, who is the landlady of small agriturismo lodgings, come to mind here.  Proudly she told me in her native language – “Sono Contadina” – “”I am a peasant.”  To her, I replied simply, “Anch’io, sono contadino nella sangue” – “I, too, am a peasant in the blood.”

To bring these few words to a conclusion, I will mention here a wonderful Irish novel that I am reading.  It is called That They May Face The Rising Sun, and it is written by one of the greatest twentieth century Irish novelists, the late great John McGahern.  This is a novel written in the simplest and easiest of styles with a flow that only closeness to nature could have begotten.  McGahern is of all too obvious obvious peasant roots.  He writes like an angel, inspired by the movements of the earth around our great Sun Star.  He writes with a consummate ease that can plumb the depths and scale the heights of the human heart and soul.  As any observer and lover of nature will know: everything in its province has its time and its season.  Just as surely as the sun goes down it will rise again tomorrow.  Just as surely as an old cow dies another calf will delight the on-looking eyes of a farmer’s child.  Just as surely as the storms and rains come the calm of the cloudless skies will return.  Those of us close to nature will realise that we, too, are part of that very same cycle.  We humans come and go.  No sooner has one poor soul ceased breathing on this earth of ours than another soul will be born into the bounty of the earth.

The sad thing is that it takes us a lifetime to learn the simplicities of life, the simplicities which our forefathers acquired ever so easily because they were so close to nature.  We have lost a lot in gaining such advancement in technology.  Not that I am decrying technology here as I use the Internet a lot and find it comforting and useful, and even sometimes distracting and even rewarding.  I am no Luddite.  My point is simple – we moderns have become so alienated from our true nature as part of the cycles of the Seasons.  We moderns have become alienated from our real Selves, what it means to be truly human in this wonderful, if at times painful, world.