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.
I think Kavanagh was a Catholic poet. As you mentioned he always believed in God and a mystical strain ran through his poetry but it was more than this. He was pondering on Christ often through his poetry. He saw Christ as the grandest man. He was deeply on Christ's side. He mentioned that as a child he received Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays in honour of the Sacred Heart and to obtain the promise of final perseverance, and the devotion gave him great confidence ever since. I think it is this confidence that comes out in his poetry. He wasn't afraid of telling or rather being truthful. Being a pest as he called it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you as you wrote in another post that his Kavanagh's Weekly prose is terrible. He was a terrible journalist. But he was a genius of a poet. I know you love Yeats but I prefer Kavanagh. And I think it's those two who have the most poems in the lists of Ireland's hundred favourite poems. Kavanagh's poems are the only poems I know by heart. But he would have hated me. His scathing eye that seemed to constantly disect life so he could poetically get under it or past it, at real life. He was somewhat tormented by how he saw Irish reality in its mediocrity but he knew Christ was the best of us, and he was also on the side of the historic Irish Catholic people.
Thanks for that great comment. Your comment was better than my post!
ReplyDeleteYes, I take your point, and there is a meaningful sense in which Kavanagh was a Catholic poet. You'd know his poetry a lot better than I do but his imagination does seem to have been shot through with Catholicism and he was probably deeply rooted in it.
Prefer Kavanagh to Yeats? Shock! Actually he would love to hear that as I think he really struggled with the shadow of his great predecessor. As for Kavanagh hating you, well, he seems to have been pretty scathing even towards his disciples so he might have been scathing to everybody! I didn't know that point about the nine first Fridays, that's absolutely fascinating, and indeed heartening. Thanks again!