HERALD OF SPRING

A solitary sentinel near Kilbane in County Clare ~ (Antoin)~

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The prim and proper Primrose,

Sits smiling in the sun,

A woodland testimonial

Since time itself begun.

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Gerard O'Shea

NORTHERN IRISH FEARS

The awful spectre of killing on the streets of Northern Ireland returned last week, when two soldiers were gunned down and in a separate incident a policeman was shot dead. These events sent a shudder throughout the Province and the wider community on the island of Ireland, as the unthinkable prospect of a return to the ‘Troubles’ became a possibility. Hopefully the huge outcry against these atrocities, especially from the members of Sinn Fein (formerly aligned with the Provisional I.R.A), may yet prove a positive outcome from such tragic events. This poem was written by a lady from N.I. and has a powerful if subtle message of hope for the future. ~GOSh.~

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WE CHANGE THE MAPS

This new map, unrolled, smoothed,
seems innocent as the one we have discarded,
impersonal as the clocks in rows
along the upper border, showing time-zones.

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The colours are pale and clear, the contours
crisp, decisive, keeping order.
The new names, lettered firmly, lie quite still
within the boundaries that the wars spill over.

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It is the times.

I have been always one for paths myself.
The mole’s view. Paths and small roads and the next bend.
Arched trees tunnelling into a coin of light.
No overview, no sense of what lies where.

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Pinning up maps now, pinning my attention,
I cannot hold whole countries in my mind,
nor recognise their borders.

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These days I want to trace
the shape of every townland in this valley;
name families; count trees, walls, cattle, gable-ends,
smoke-soft and tender in the near blue distance.


Kerry Hardie

A MINOR DETAIL

CHANGING ACCOUNTS !

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Mother decided that 10-year-old Cathy should get something 'practical' for her birthday.
"Suppose we open a savings account for you?" mother suggested. Cathy was delighted.
"It's your account, darling," mother said as they arrived at the bank, "so you fill out the application."
Cathy was doing fine until she came to the space for 'Name of your former bank.' After a slight hesitation, she put down 'Piggy.'

THE SANDS OF TIME

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley

IT'S ALL ACADEMIC

A Philosophy Student

RULES FOR COLLEGE

Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab.
Don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab.
Don't SMELL anything in a biology lab.
Don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab.
and, most importantly,
Don't LISTEN to anything
in a philosophy department.

MARCH SNOW

Monica enjoying the snow at the Peoples

Park in Limerick this morning (Irish Times)

SLIP-SLIDING AWAY !

This morning I awoke to a thoroughly changed landscape as overnight the terrain had been gently sprinkled with a fall of snow. Yes snow in March, doesn’t sound right, I thought March was all about showers and gusts though I’m not complaining as I am a bit of a ‘snow head’(as my nearest and dearest will surely attest). What is it about the powdery power of snowfall that sets the heart racing and brings out the child in us, that bewitches adult men and women into snow-ball throwing, snowmen-building loons ? Maybe it’s the surreal almost moon-walk quality of the crunchy stuff underfoot, or the fact that our sometimes drab urban surroundings have been painted white and bright and glistening. The more I go on I realise this is the Christmas blog I never got to write, so you in no-snow-at-the-mo land will have to indulge me in my post Advent glee at this delayed gift from the heavens. Every garden I passed today seemed to be sporting their very latest cheery tenant , a black hatted, carrot-nosed, full figured man of snow dressed in fetching white buttoned up by a fistful of small stones ! Maybe such a simple act of Nature may lift our recessionary gloom even for a day or two as we realise that we live in a beautiful world, and that not everything of worth carries a price tag. To see children play and frolic, kicking up jets of fresh fallen snow and run skidding through the fleecy carpet, cheeks aglow and hearts aflutter is as heartening a scene as you could wish for in these days of mounting job-losses and gathering economic gloom. So let’s bring out the sledge, wrap up well and go out there and slip and slide our way out of recession and into the breath-taking ecstasy of messing about in our out of season Winter wonderland.

Gerard O'Shea

U2 ON THE LINE

A Youthful U2

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PUSHING THE 'HOPE' BOUNDARY

A new album from U2 has by now (their 12 th,) become something of a global event as the Dublin based group have withstood the vicissitudes of the pop/rock industry better than most. For three decades Bono, Larry, Adam and the Edge have played together in a band and have produced some of the most sublime and uplifting music in that often over hyped and tedious genre. What makes the output of U2 tower above their contemporaries is the positivism and spirituality of their songs along with the dramatic and often anthemic quality of the music. The individual band members attitude to the whole business is also refreshingly frank and lacking in the breathtaking arrogance often associated with so called super group Rock stars. As to their new album ‘No Line On The Horizon’ on first hearing there are two stand-out tracks, ‘Magnificent’ and ‘Moment of Surrender’ both of which contain the teasing ambiguity of some of U2’s finest. In ‘Magnificent’ Bono in a Psalmic mode cries out “ I was born to sing for you / I didn’t have a choice / But to lift you up / And sing whatever song you wanted me to / I give you back my voice / From the womb my first cry / It was a joyful noise”. He is one of the few top performers today who can in a largely secular world ,get away with writing such explicitly faith based lyrics , largely I think because no one doubts that these are emotions strongly and sincerely held. The strength of U2 and probably the cohesive force that has kept them together for so long is their shared Christian experience, from those early Charismatic Prayer meetings of their adolescence right up to Bono’s continuing campaigning for third world debt cancellation and marshaling of heads of state to combat poverty in Africa. Adam to my knowledge does not share the bands Christian beliefs but obviously their friendship over the years has forged bonds on different levels.

Bono's on his knees again !

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On ‘Moment of Surrender’ Bono sings “At the moment of surrender / I folded to my knees / I did not notice the passers-by / And they did not notice me.” In fact on stage Bono spends a good deal of time on his knees, one suspects as a homage to the King and indicative of where the singer sees himself in the scheme of things. Bono’s ego seems of gigantic proportions as he struts about the stage and with almost prophetic urgency delivers the U2 repertoire to rapt concert goers, but he is most aware of the pitfalls of living the rock and roll lie. Recently in an interview with the Irish Times he recounted meeting someone at a party, “This guy, who I thought sort of liked me, came over to me and starting telling me what a ****** I was and how much he hated me, and how he had always hated me right from the very start.” The Edge arrives and says: “That’s no way for U2’s drummer to be talking to you.” The yin and yang of U2 look at each other and dissolve into laughter. Whatever about on a personal level Bruce Springsteen once observed on Bono the artist, “"His voice is shot through with self-doubt. The constant questioning in Bono's voice is where the band stakes its claim to its humanity and declares its commonality with us: 'Here we are, Lord, this mess, in your image.'" Maybe it’s this vulnerability coupled with their acknowledgement that this isn’t all there is, that make U2 such an indispensable voice in these recessionary and gloom ridden times.

The boys lash it out under the Lincoln

Memorial at Barack Obama's Inauguration

Certainly in this country at this time our staple news diet is full of dire economic predictions, job losses and pay cuts so much so that many people I know have stopped listening to the daily news, for them could I suggest replacing the audio void with large helpings of ‘No Line On The Horizon’ or in fact any of U2’s previous dozen offerings over the last 30 years. The Celtic Tiger generation may at last realise that they still haven’t found what they’re looking for, and perhaps there’s more to this ‘Kingdom come’ business than meets the eye ! John Waters in his review of the new album enthuses “With No Line On The Horizon, they have achieved something that, oddly, stands with one leg in the shallow, concentrate-version of U2 that the world has taken at face value for a decade, and one leg in a future as exciting as anything they have hitherto allowed us to glimpse. If, as we have previously noted, music is prophetic as to the drift of wider reality, then this album may be the most hopeful thing you will hear all year.” And ‘hope’ is the one commodity that they don’t deal on the Stock Exchange, so grab it while it’s flying and let the music lift you higher !
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Gerard O'Shea