Poetic Tributes
This page contains tributes made made through poetry by friends and fellow poets. Anyone is welcome to post a tribute of any form here- please just email what you wish to post.
Resurrection A tribute to Michael Hartnett By Michael O' Flanagan Twenty thousand doors abruptly slammed in my face - cast out of my place. Being damned with faint praise - the blight of my twilight days Death sees me reborn To sup with the poor a ghostly diminutive form My joy rekindled.
The Visit Eigse Michael Hartnett 2003 As visitors do I thought to bring armfuls of flowers or a single stem graceful with dew, searched each shop display for the perfect petalled gift, thought of culling wild woodbine from hedgerows or the bright red berries winter birds feed on, but arrived with empty hands took, instead of gave, a pebble from your grave. Pauline Fayne
A Lament for Michael Hartnett By Hugh McFadden From an early age your voice was true precocious, mature prodigious and a wonderful portent of a rare talent. I picture you in a pub in lower Leeson Street in 1962 reciting your version of the delicate Tao, first written at 17, the excitement in your voice at acpturing such beauty; a fabulous, exotic thing, a strange bird flown in to Dublin from the Far East. But you were from Limerick West _Croom_ and remained faithful to your own duchas the spirit of your own place and the people who, you vowed, you would not see go down. Sadness steals over my soul like a wave of darkness moving over lake or field as the sun goes behind cloud. Sad singing in Darkness indeed. I hope your going wasn't lonely and that the spirit of truth you honoured in poetry will grant you peace on the other side.
O Winged Bird By John Liddy O WINGED BIRD Our fathers knew each other in the music of hurling, As we did in poems and songs, and though the years Fill our lives with empty meeting places, I treasure Your line 'B�thar an fhile gan chloch mh�le air'. There was no poetry in my milestones then, you said, The people of Clonard and Ballymurphy would sort it out. But I wrote my Southern Comfort in hindsight, to begin The search for Starkie's gypsy ballads in post-Lorca Spain. Going home to Heaney's fish-smelling balcony I found A swallow dropped in from under the crucifying sun, A wren handkerchiefed outside, wrapped in a blanket From a convent bed in Santa Teresa's Encarnaci�n. Over dinner you let slip a jar of beetroot and for years The stubborn stain on the tiles spoke to me of hedge birds Claiming the ditch in spring, Templeglantine memory Of children chasing a pig round the hillside garden. Much of what you trawled from your travels sparkled Afresh on the page. The day your grandmother died During the Moroccan Madrid fling, O Bruadair's tortured Tribe, the death of a Gaeltacht in Moonagay, love and exile In the Pale, and all that m�in a' bheatha seeping through The veins of a dangerous little bundle, a sickly child, Who was the worth of two poets in two languages, Who heard 'wings of parchment shake and bells weep'.
A Rhyme for Michael by Desmond Egan Michael: banjo music on the limerick train Michael: a jack snipe's wing Michael: eyes bitten like fingernails Michael: a smoky poker-ring Michael: steps he backed-stepped in the snow Michael: steak and kidney pie Michael: listen Des I have to go Michael: a letter that never arrives Michael: the Exchequer St. Exchange Michael: a loan from the EBS Michael: a 1-pound note left to blow away Michael: a cheque cashed in O'Neill's Michael: another poet's topcoat Michael: a broken smile Michael: tiny script in a note- book, its cover biroed by a child.
