Favourite Poems: Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

Well, I've posted this poem before. Several times, possibly. But it's Advent, so why not?

This poem was on the Irish poetry syllabus for years, and also appeared in the much-loved anthology Soundings. So it's familiar to most Irish people from their schooldays, and the second line has become (rightly) proverbial in Ireland.

I always felt the final line was a bit of a let-down, a bit on the trite side, but what do I know? Aside from that, the poem is impossible to fault.

Kavanagh is often called a Catholic poet. I suppose he was, in the rather rubbishy sense of "a poet influenced by the Catholic tradition". Séamus Heaney, who was to all appearances an atheist (as well as a mediocre poet, at best) also gets called a Catholic poet. Kavanagh once called Catholicism "a beautiful fairy tale for adults". I think this was his general attitude to the Faith. But he died with the words "I believe...I believe" on his lips. Was it a deathbed profession of faith in Catholicism? I hope so.

In any case, he was always a believer in God, and a deep mystical strain runs through his poetry.

Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-

Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.

But here in the Advent-darkened room

Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea

Of penance will charm back the luxury

Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to Doom

The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing

When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking

Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill

Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking

Of an old fool will awake for us and bring

You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins

And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching

For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-

We’ll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning

Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.

And we’ll hear it among decent men too

Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,

Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.

Won’t we be rich, my love and I, and

God we shall not ask for reason’s payment,

The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges

Nor analyse God’s breath in common statement.

We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages

Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-

And Christ comes with a January flower.