{"id":16668,"date":"2024-07-03T12:15:05","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T11:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=16668"},"modified":"2024-07-03T12:15:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T11:15:05","slug":"poem-the-vagabond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/07\/03\/poem-the-vagabond\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: &#8216;The Vagabond&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The Vagabond<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><em>J.M. Synge, 1871-1909<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>To comprehend, regard the brutal wilderness to hand.<br \/>\nMore than most, the burrow-broken vagabonds<br \/>\nrecall the living tune. In remoter reaches<br \/>\nof the Wicklow hills, they live where a sodden soul<br \/>\ncould barely pass, and look out all the year on unimpeded<br \/>\nbarriers of heath. In every season, heavy sleets of freezing water<br \/>\ndescend interminably, so the roof-thatch drips a colour<br \/>\npeaty-blue, and the cottage-floors are sinking,<br \/>\nboggy in the wet. The wide skies rock in hellish<br \/>\nstorminess: by dawn the ragged larches that endure<br \/>\nare bent and twisted, bowing bleakly to the rim<br \/>\nwhere sunlight somehow rises in the summer.<br \/>\nDown the beggar-glens the churning wind, as well,<br \/>\ncomes whirling with a river-roar that time<br \/>\nto time will lessen, of a sudden, giving way<br \/>\nto hush \u2013 enough, that is, to sow a tension<br \/>\nin the listening body, neck and limbs, of anyone<br \/>\nwho waits, crouching with an ear ajar<br \/>\nfor the mournful cries of country-dogs<br \/>\nthat prowl among the crags. The elder-folk<br \/>\nwho keep and carry on the memory, the quenchable<br \/>\ntradition, of risen insurrection, raising fire in the guts,<br \/>\nare dwindling today, a disappearing army, blown afar \u2013<br \/>\nthough here and there, disguised among the lonely<br \/>\nand the low, I&#8217;ve met them as I passed along,<br \/>\nand gathered up their words. To see these Irish men<br \/>\nand Irish women sunken, unrepenting, their leather-<br \/>\nskin and ageing eyes ablaze again, condemned for good<br \/>\nnot to the viscerating gibbet, but to the slow obscurity<br \/>\nof dying-out, forgotten but by dreamers and the fey \u2013<br \/>\nit&#8217;s been enough to wring me with the pang of isolation,<br \/>\nan echo of that dumb, determining distemper, impossible<br \/>\nto heal, of unredeemed deracination&#8230; a share, perhaps,<br \/>\nof the desolation mixed in every region of the land<br \/>\nwith the waterfalling beauty of experience itself, the luminous<br \/>\ncascade we all have known, elusive, controvertible, but actual<br \/>\nand active to the penetrating mind. I raise my hungry fist<br \/>\nin health \u2013 to the ferocity and wonder of the world.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Image: \u00a9 Daniele Idini<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Vagabond J.M. Synge, 1871-1909 To comprehend, regard the brutal wilderness to hand. More than most, the burrow-broken vagabonds recall the living tune. In remoter reaches of the Wicklow hills, they live where a sodden soul could barely pass, and look out all the year on unimpeded barriers of heath. In every season, heavy sleets [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":246,"featured_media":16676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1688,1691,1692,1695,4739,7308,7309,7320,7341,8922,9325,9786,10108,10109],"class_list":["post-16668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-ciaran-orourke-cassandra-voices","tag-ciaran-orourke-poetry","tag-ciaran-orourke-the-vagabond","tag-ciaran-orourke","tag-j-m-synge","tag-poem-ciaran-orourke","tag-poem-in-memory-of-j-m-synge","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-the","tag-the-vagabond-poem","tag-vagabond","tag-wicklow-hills-in-poetry","tag-wicklow-hills-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}