Troubles

By Michael Farry

Troubles, this third collection of poetry by Michael Farry, is a powerful exploration of a significant period in Ireland’s history. With considerable allure, it demonstrates Farry’s skill as an important poet in the modern Irish landscape as well as a first-rate historian of the country’s particular narrative.
- Caryolyne Van Der Meer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limerick Writers Centre
• Release date: Aug 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005157364

Michael Farry

Michael Farry is a historian and poet. He completed a PhD at Trinity College Dublin on the history of the Civil War in his native Sligo. Further studies led to other publications including Sligo: The Irish Revolution, 1912-23 (Four Courts Press, 2012) and an article on Sligo in the monumental Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Cork University Press, 2017). Michael’s poetry has been published in journals and anthologies in the USA, Australia, Canada, India and Israel and he has two poetry collections to his credit, Asking for Directions (Doghouse, 2012) and The Age of Glass (Revival Press, 2017). He has been the winner in many poetry competitions including Dromineer, North West Words and Síarscéal. He was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions in 2010. He is a founding member of Boyne Writers Group, Trim, County Meath and of LitLab, the Cavan/Meath writers group. He is a retired primary teacher who lives in County Meath.

Book preview

The last time that we parted my heart

was sad and sore;

I told her as I lingered at the turf stack

near the door,

Though fire would fail, the bright moon

wane, and clouds the sun obscure,

Love’s flame would in my bosom burn

for ever bright and pure;

And climbing up upon a rock to wave

a last adieu

I vowed that I’d return to her and lovely

Glenavoo—

That some day I’d return to her—the girl

of Glenavoo.

The Girl of Glenavoo, A Ballad, Jem Gouldrick, Sligo Times 10 Aug 1912

Military Archives

In hushed, high-ceilinged rooms, pencilled, cotton-gloved,

he takes documents from cardboard boxes,

their edges crumbling as he reads.

He eavesdrops on conversations and replies—he admires

the monument’s restraint, the quote in Irish,

but the veterans will demand a firearm.

A local leader apologises to the action hero for his reports,

promises him weekly details in indelible ink,

meticulous listings of their every kill.

But it’s the bureaucratic questionnaires that fascinate him,

those answers setting out an active service

history in precise, humdrum details.

He envies them, their routine recording of abnormal times,

their unadorned phrases in copybook script,

their stored up memories and regrets.

Troubles

Another long silence

wool-gathering significant seconds

it looked as if they were going to get sense

at last.

But

impossible young men

(how many times do I have to . . . )

patiently losing,

the old

obstinate and senile

it became clear

that it did no good to explain.

Beyond, there was no hope

no use complaining –

charred rubble, molten glass, delicate skeletons

one blackened compartment to another

open to the mild Irish sky

insignificant

still troubled

painfully at peace.

Extracted from the final two pages, 410 & 411, of Troubles by J. G. Farrell (Penguin, 1975).

Tomb at Gortakeeran

This four thousand year old

mountainside wall-wedded

rude stone monument

has grown into its ground

ripened to a landmark

since its chambered wedge

was crammed with those

whose mould-poured bronze

axes hacked the woods below.

No conqueror or collector

of antique splendour coveted

these rough portals, uprooted

orthostats for heist to empire’s

hub, as gawked-at trophies

in Great Russell Street,

to screech unheard

for skittish sky glimpse,

single knee to genuflect

in genuine idolatry. Here

on windswept treasury

megalithic longhand scribbles

on claimed ground, invites

curiosity, inquiry, ignorance

and invaluable indifference.

Katherine Peyton MacDermot Roe Thompson

Instead of overseeing the garden, genteel sewing circles,

dinner parties, she learned how to beg, distribute food,

clothes and seed, watch naked wretches die in ditches.

Bourn down with the weight of suffering humanity,

I appeal to you for aid and in mercy deny it not,

I impress on your benevolent society

the utter distress in this mountain district.

Let the cry of the orphan and widow

come before you to justify all I portray.

They subsist on nettles and watercress

and look more like spectres clothed in rags than humans.

Yellow globe turnips require less manure and suit our moors better.

Granted: 1847

May: half ton rice, ten bags biscuits

June: half ton rice, five bags biscuits

July: half ton rice, one hundredweight sago

September: quarter ton rice, three bags biscuits.

Died of Starvation: 1847

29 January: Peggy Keon, Carrownaskea

5 February: Pat Fallon, Creevane

6 February: John Masterson, Killoran

After that

Katherine’s coroner husband

Meredith Thompson

stopped holding inquests.

Italicized section comes from Katherine’s letters of 1847 in the Society of Friends Relief Papers, National Archives, Dublin.

The Westmorland Election 1818

Every one of those men a radical, she said,

when I spoke of that meeting twenty-years before.

Yes, I said, William Frend banished from Cambridge,

Holcroft tried for treason, and solitary Godwin

convinced organisations were alien to the pursuit of truth.

But now, she said, slave is what they call you.

They have been deluded by people and places;

in nothing are my principles changed,

I changed sides perhaps, when ideology fed massacre

and dead bodies cluttered the streets.

I saw the tumbrils, the infernal columns,

the car bombs, the beheadings,

remembered the pall of smoke over the cities,

the silencing of those who spoke their minds,

the summary executions, the bog burials.

Now, in these present distresses,

a secret friend to truth,

I oppose the cankerous coalescence of dissent,

the worship of finance and political economy,

the hijacking of an ambiguous past.

I detest the press-led urban mob

who screech on front page and talk show,

demanding centralism, outrageous uniformity,

everything sold for the highest price,

with no regard