In the meantime I thought I’d treat you to a poem by another of her famous sons, Hugh Murphy.

 

An Image

 

I remember them standing

On a Sunday morning

Shifting their feet

On the stone yard

Each the master

Of his own authority

Heads pinioned

In speech

Coats pulled tight

Around the waist,

Decked out in caricature

To honour the mystery

Once a week,

With the paper waiting

In the rusty van

To be bought and carried

Home

For their Sunday feast

Of idleness.

 

The headlines read

In awkward silence

In the first moment

Of uncertainty

When the intellectual burden

Was thrust in caroused hand;

And they stand, definite,

Tomorrow unquestioned

In their sense of purpose

A commonplace

As sure as market day

Or the threshing meet.

Each frozen in my memory

About to turn

Or take a step,

Quick-set in their certainty.

 

All gone

But for the fragile image.

Lislea graveyard

In its hasty greed

Has gulped their wandering feet.