Wearing of the Green

Lush with withering sarcasm, laughter, and verdant greens.

Front facade of Blarney Castle. Kiss the Stone of Eloquence and never be at a loss for words. Yes, I've kissed it. But you knew that already, no?



Deep with nostalgia and love for their earthly paradise.

They laughed at one I loved-
The triangular hill that hung
Under the Big Forth. They said
That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges
Of the little farm and did not know the world.

But I knew that love's doorway to life
Is the same doorway everywhere.
Ashamed of what I loved
I flung her from me and called her a ditch
Although she was smiling at me with violets.

But now I am back in her briary arms
The dew of an Indian Summer lies
On bleached potato-stalks
What age am I?

I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age;
I know nothing of women, Nothing of cities,
I cannot die Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.

- Innocence, P.Kavanagh, Ireland




Mortally wounded time and time again by history, and well-schooled in what it is to be survivors and revolutionaries, albeit emotional ones; that runs heavy in this blood.



"Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning to consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?”

- Eamon De Valera, on Victory Day in Europe, May 8, 1945, responding in a radio speech to criticism by Winston Churchill of Ireland’s neutrality in World War II, a speech in which De Valera also thanked Churchill for not invading Ireland.



And now woven into American lives for the better, for the richer. The hunger and blood shed tied to the reasons we are now American never having truly left one Irish-American I have ever known: Surviving is in this weighty gene pool and reminders are whispered into tiny ears in cradles, after Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra and before Ballyeamon.

Even here, even on these American shores.

These are my people.






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