When Will My Time Come– 

Michael Higgins

Uachtarán

(President Elect of Ireland)

When will my time come for scenery
And will it be too late?
After all
Decades ago I was never able
To get excited
About filling the lungs with ozone
On Salthill Prom.

And when the strangers
To whom I gave a lift
Spoke to me of the extraordinary
Light in the Western sky;
I often missed its changes.
And, later, when words were required
To intervene at the opening of Art Exhibitions,
It was not the same.

What is this tyranny of head that stifles
The eyes, the senses,
All play on the strings of the heart.

And, if there is a healing,
It is in the depth of a silence,
Whose plumbed depths require
A journey through realms of pain
That must be faced alone.
The hero, setting out,
Will meet an ally at a crucial moment.
But the journey home
Is mostly alone.

When my time comes
I will have made my journey
And through all my senses will explode
The evidence of light
And air and water, fire and earth.

I live for that moment.

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Well, it’s interesting. We face the prospect of more of the same, or the insane, or a pizza salesman. The Irish get a poet. Granted, the presidency of Ireland is less the powerful spot held by DeValera for decades, from the end of the civil war to the 60s and more an elected version of the British Monarchy. He presides, and he then makes state visits.

But, given a choice between a business man best known for being one of the assholes on Dragons Den or the former Chief of Staff of the IRA, the Irish chose a part-time politician and full-time Irish poet. While not Seamus Healy, Michael Higgins like Louis McNeice and himself brings something worthwhile to the whole mess. And for that, perhaps we should look again to the Irish and possibly the Icelanders to preserve civilization after the glance up the skirts of capitalism we’ve endured the last few years in particular and decades in general. The women have taken over Iceland and the poets are taking over Ireland. Not a lot to say…for us.

I have developed a habit as I walk into the my office in the morning of flipping on the computer and then playing the guitar for a bit. While I seem to be finding myself listening to a lot of Celtic revival stuff of late, I started this morning with Boolavouge and then The Rising of the Moon. We’ll see…Oh, and Feck is a slightly restrained version of fuck…in case you were wondering.

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