PATRICK KAVANAGH

I was reading some poetry aloud recently and remembered the wonderful work of Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967).  He said of himself that his purpose in life was to have no purpose. As a young man, he walked out of Monaghan all the way to Dublin to meet the literary elite and was rejected out of hand. But eventually he found his way and his place. In a conversation with two Irish university students from Galway, I asked them what they knew about Irish literature, and while their knowledge was very limited they knew Patrick Kavanagh. That pleased me. Here is one of his early poems.

To the Man After the Harrow


Now leave the check-reins slack,
The seed is flying far today--
The seed like stars against the black
Eternity of April clay.
This seed is potent as the seed
Of knowledge in the Hebrew Book
So drive your horses in the creed
Of God the Father as a stock.

Forget the men on Brady's hill.
Forget what Brady's boy may say.
For destiny will not fulfil
Unless you let the harrow play.

Forget the worm's opinion too
Of hooves and pointed harrow-pins,
For you are driving your horses through
The mist where Genesis begins.
                                                1933

Beautiful as this poem is, in later life Kavanagh disowned it because it was too poetic, too much in the way of the things that the critics thought was good. He went on to write some very great poems in a very different manner. THE GREAT HUNGER is probably his best known work, and very powerful it is.