A POEM ABOUT POEMS (for Poetry Day Ireland)

I discovered this morning that it was Poetry Day Ireland. Between meetings, injections for Uganda and my daughters' GB Display tonight I noted down a few lines about the importance of poems. The first and last lines are stolen from Seamus Heaney - appropriately!

 

Poems, they set the darkness echoing

Search your soul when they sneak inside

Poems are the Psalms of our lamentation

And the space where we create to confide.

 

Poems caress our hearts with love songs

Gave us the words to say “I love you”

Poems soothe the hurt of our heartaches

Give us the push to pull on through.

 

Poems protest with sharp fresh perspective

And crash against all our shallow facade

Poems remind us that we are not alone

And save our thoughts from going mad.

 

Poems put warm flesh on our stereotypes

Make friends from what we dehumanise

Poems rub grace on stiff sore muscles of law

And knock over the idol of dogma’s lies.

 

Poems are 12 bar blues for our trauma

Healing open wounds of that bloody time

Poems shine light on what if we imagine

Take us to where hope and history rhyme.