Poem: Maker, in memory of Pat Joe Morley 

Cork poet Bernard O'Donoghue has written a poem in tribute to his neighbour 

Pat Joe Morley was a builder and building contractor from Glounthane, Cullen, Co Cork, who was a generous and highly skilled benefactor of the  community in northwest Cork. He was a passionate supporter of Cork GAA teams, especially the hurlers, and a daily reader of the Irish Examiner.

Maker

i.m. Pat Joe Morley 

Of all the virtues, he had least time for patience.
When the tension of the closing stages
of the match became unbearable,
he’d seize his cap and set off down the fields
with the dogs. Or when the days indoors
dragged, he’d take off out to the shed
to fiddle with the tuning of the tractor
or to sand down the rungs of a wooden chair.
He learned to know the durability
of wood from its grain. His first job
had been making coffins in Kildare;
in his good times, he said, he could make
twelve in a day, sawing and planing
and varnishing until night fell.
He told me he had broken every finger
at least once in a lifetime of building
haybarns and staircases and kitchen cabinets
all through the county, as he worked
to leave the world better than he found it.

• Bernard O’Donoghue is a poet and academic from Cullen, Co Cork. Before retiring in 2011, he taught English at Wadham College and Magdalen College in Oxford.  O'Donoghue's latest book of poems is The Seasons of Cullen Church (Faber)