We truly need poetry in power

THIS May 12 we waked Patrick Galvin, one of our great national poets, in Connolly Hall in Cork.

His remains had been brought there from his home in Douglas in a horse-drawn hearse. Patrick was the first man to ever be waked in Cork’s Connolly Hall, and this on the very day that James Connolly was killed in 1916; we knew that Paddy would have been honoured.

When we finally said our goodbyes to Paddy at the Island Crematorium in Cork Harbour, Michael D Higgins was invited to read one of Paddy’s poems. It was a poem called “Letter To The Editor” about a self-important man who, upon dying, realises that society is not celebrating him as his ego had mislead him to think it would. The poem is a letter from the dead man to the editor of a newspaper’s letters page and it is really one of the funniest of Paddy’s poems.

Michael D read it exquisitely and afterwards I heard Mary say that Michael D was one of only two politicians who Paddy would have wanted at his funeral, and how she thought it was especially fitting, seeing as another of the poems read was “Roses for the President”.

Now it is late October and different poems will be recited for brave and strong Mary who will be buried this week having lost her battle against cancer on Monday. Despite the great challenges they faced in their final years I think that neither Paddy nor Mary would want people to feel sorry for them or anything like that. I believe that the legacy they would really prefer to leave would be that their work be used by an Ireland finally ready to throw off our servile attitudes that sees society censor itself and curtsey before material power. Ireland needs our poets to remind us of what is really strong and unique about ourselves and this country.

After the devastation of the material boom, Ireland really needs to put poetry in power.

Fiachra Ó Luain

Woodfield House

Clara

Co Offaly