{"id":18332,"date":"2025-12-12T07:51:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T07:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=18332"},"modified":"2025-12-12T07:51:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T07:51:47","slug":"poem-external-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2025\/12\/12\/poem-external-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: &#8216;External Return&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><b>Eternal Return<\/b><\/p>\n<p>My sixteen year old daughter comes to me to complain about<br \/>\nPatrick Kavanagh.<br \/>\nO great irony, hardly are the words out of her mouth<br \/>\nAnd I can see those fucking potatoes,<br \/>\nThe drills and the furrows of old bloody Monaghan!<\/p>\n<p>Why do we do it? Why does every generation get subjected<br \/>\nTo this kind of shit?<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t Life bad enough without having to force poetry<br \/>\nAbout bleeding potatoes down their bloody throats!<\/p>\n<p>And then, just as I am almost in despair,<br \/>\nAnd I\u2019m a bloody poet myself,<br \/>\nHer voice pipes up again, and she adds;<br \/>\n\u201cAlthough,\u00a0<i>Epic\u00a0<\/i>isn\u2019t half bad, at least he mentions Homer!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And, I see again my reading of the poem through her eyes,<br \/>\nWhen I too saw the ancient importance ricocheting<br \/>\nIn Paddy Boy,<br \/>\nAs she too recognised the importance of Homer<br \/>\nAnd his epic take on Life.<\/p>\n<p>Staring across the kitchen table at her,<br \/>\nWith not a potato in sight,<br \/>\nI somehow saw the great blind ancient hovering above us<br \/>\nMonumentally human, whispering to us both<br \/>\nAcross the infinite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eternal Return My sixteen year old daughter comes to me to complain about Patrick Kavanagh. O great irony, hardly are the words out of her mouth And I can see those fucking potatoes, The drills and the furrows of old bloody Monaghan! Why do we do it? Why does every generation get subjected To this &#8230; <a title=\"Poem: &#8216;External Return&#8217;\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2025\/12\/12\/poem-external-return\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Poem: &#8216;External Return&#8217;\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":18356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[97,1449,3124,5567,7159,7160,7169,7320,7341,7791],"class_list":["post-18332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-poetry","tag-external","tag-cassandra-voices-poetry","tag-external-return","tag-literature","tag-peter-oneill-poet","tag-peter-oneill-poetry","tag-peter-oneill","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-return"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18332","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\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}