“for all your loss and gain / the soul defines the suffering / an illusion is hope born from fear”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, a sonnet on the same subject, in its way, as Farjeon's Peace:


Epic, Patrick Kavanagh

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided; who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul!’
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel—
‘Here is the march along these iron stones’
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.


Kavanagh (1904–1967) was an Irish poet and novelist. A rood is about a quarter acre. I cannot decide whether the last sentence is the ghost or the poet speaking. (Admittedly, this matters less for interpretation than Keats versus the Grecian urn.)

---L.

Subject quote from Safe in Your Arms, Beth Orton.

Comments

[rymenhild]

That is a glorious sonnet.

[larryhammer]

Innit? For that alone, he should be remembered long.

[cmcmck]

The rood or rod was a measurement based on an ox goader's rod and was used to measure ground to be ploughed.

I've always loved all those rods, poles, perches and chains for land measurement! :o)

A chain (22 yards) is the length of a cricket pitch. Trufact!

[larryhammer]

I did not know that about a chain. I assume there was a standard chain trotted out as part of marking out a pitch?