Poems and translations

Chapter 9: PATCH-SHANEEN

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About This Book

The collection gathers lyric and ballad-like poems that portray rural landscapes, local speech, and vivid characters through dark humor, elegy, and plainspoken lyricism; many pieces are concise narratives or monologues about love, death, loss, and social life, while others register mythic or meditative moods. A substantial section offers translations and adaptations from Petrarch, Villon, Leopardi, and medieval lyricists, varying between literal and free renderings. A prefatory essay frames the poet's interest in mixing exalted feeling with the material of ordinary life. The sequence balances songful rhythms with austere images and an abrupt, colloquial voice.

PATCH-SHANEEN

Shaneen and Maurya Prendergast

Lived west in Carnareagh,

And they’d a cur-dog, cabbage plot,

A goat, and cock of hay.

He was five foot one or two,

Herself was four foot ten,

And he went travelling asking meal

Above through Caragh Glen.

She’d pick her bag of carrageen

Or perries through the surf,

Or loan an ass of Foxy Jim

To fetch her creel of turf.

Till on one windy Samhain night,

When there’s stir among the dead,

He found her perished, stiff and stark,

Beside him in the bed.

And now when Shaneen travels far

From Droum to Ballyhyre

The women lay him sacks or straw,

Beside the seed of fire.

And when the grey cocks crow and flap,

And winds are in the sky,

“Oh, Maurya, Maurya, are you dead?”

You’ll hear Patch-Shaneen cry.