A POEM ABOUT POEMS (for Poetry Day Ireland)
26/04/2018
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.
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