Like J.C. at the grave of Lazarus I was moved, not to tears, but to pen this piece of vitriol on PI, the great book of Ireland and related incidents, real and imagined. Some of you may have seen it before this, its from my greatest hits album. A learned treatise on why Irish poetry moved from a dessert to a desert I often wonder – poets are supposed to wonder – why I was excluded from The Great Book of Ireland. After all some of those who did make it to the G.O.B.I. are poets great poets emigrate? Grateful rather than great for a grateful book on a bleak night. The wrektor of the gobi is a shy man and a brave man. He read a poem. He stood on the spot where De Valera got the runs in 1916.I wanted to be head buck in the great book. What a miss. .Even the Wild Geese fled. Poets long to be mortal To hear their poems discussed on R.T.E, to see them in print to re-view reviews of friends views. I could never make friends like that. Poets speak their lines in great gravitas just as I did, when I was practising to be noticed, hoping to join the trillions. Maybe I’ll be famous for not being famous. Maybe they’ll ask in years to come who was that person left out of the gobi? He must have been off- ensive. . Not a word would hurt a fly in the great book of aye. He may have lived on hunger strike. Maybe they’ll discover that I did some awe- full things. Most of the poets in the begob I and their friends and friends of friends are paid members of yesdana, the poet’s parliament. The ayes have it. I could never say I to eye or dance in step. Some of them do myriads of useful things like writing their oh! pinions on Irish times. Maybe they should stitch the gobi into a curtain and hang it in the clothes shop at the eye wash times. All the aspiring poets who haunt the literary editor can contemplate the template for success. We who go by, the few of us, looking at the blank drape, will wonder why all the fuss? Arthur Broomfield
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:36:59 +0000
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