O’Conall Street poems

It being National Poetry Day in the UK we asked the regulars on O’Conall Street (Weber Shandwick’s team) to nominate their favourite poems.

Enjoy!
Raglan Road
Patrick Kavanagh

On Raglan Road of an Autumn day
I saw her first and knew,
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might someday rue.
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way.
And I said,”Let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day.”

On Grafton Street in November, we
Tripped lightly along the ledge
Of a deep ravine where can be seen
The worth of passion play.
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts
And I not making hay;
Oh, I loved too much and by such and such
Is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind,
I gave her the secret signs,
That’s known to the artists who have known
The true gods of sound and stone.
And her words and tint without stint
I gave her poems to say
With her own name there and her own dark hair
Like clouds over fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
I see her walking now,
And away from me so hurriedly
My reason must allow.
That I had loved, not as I should
A creature made of clay,
When the angel woos the clay, he’ll lose
His wings at the dawn of day.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
William Shakesperare

SHALL I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
  

Be Kind to Belfast

Red brick in the suburb, white horse on the wall,
Italian marble in the grand city hall;
O stanger from England, why stand ye aghast?
May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast.

We swore by King William, there’d never be seen
An all Ireland parliament at College Green
And at Stormont we’re nailing the flag to the mast.
May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast.

This city that harbours our hopes and our fears
Was knocked up from the swamp in the last hundred years;
But the last shall be first and the first shall be last;
May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast

The bricks they may bleed and the rain it may weep
And the damp Lagan fog lulls the city to sleep.
It’s to Hell with the future, we’ll live in the past
May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast.

Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou

Pretty woman wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to fit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
 
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
They swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
 
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s the arch of my back
The sun in my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
 
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
I ought to make you proud
I say,
It’s the click of my heals,
The bend of my hair,
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

The Ballad of William Bloat
William Calvert

In a mean abode on the Shankill Road
Lived a man named William Bloat;
And he had a wife, the curse of his life,
Who always got his goat.
‘Til one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He slit her pretty throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash
Oh never was crime so quick
But the steady drip on the pillowslip
Of her lifeblood made him sick.
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted and cold and thick.

Now he was right glad he had done as he had
As his wife lay there so still
But a sudden awe of the mighty law
Filled his heart with an icy chill.
So to finish the fun so well begun
He resolved himself to kill.

He took the sheet from his wife’s cold feet
And twisted it into a rope
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.
In the face of death with his latest breath
He said “to hell with the Pope.”

Now the strangest turn in this whole concern
Is only just beginning.
He went to Hell, but his wife got well
And is still alive and sinning.
For the razor blade was Dublin made
But the sheet was Belfast linen.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Cloths of Heaven
William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

The Man From God Knows Where

Into our townlan’ on a night of snow
rode a man from God knows where;
None of us bade him stay or go,
nor deemed him friend, nor damned him foe,
but we stabled his big roan mare;
for in our townlan’ we’re decent folk,
and if he didn’t speak, why none of us spoke,
and we sat till the fire burned low.

We’re a civil sort in our wee place
so we made the circle wide
round Andy Lemon’s cheerful blaze,
and wished the man his length of days
and a good end to his ride.
He smiled in under his slouchy hat,
says he: ‘There’s a bit of a joke in that,
for we ride different ways.’

The whiles we smoked we watched him stare
from his seat fornenst the glow.
I nudged Joe Moore: ‘You wouldn’t dare
to ask him who he’s for meeting there,
and how far he has got to go?’
And Joe wouldn’t dare, nor Wully Scott,
And he took no drink – neither cold nor hot,
this man from God knows where.

It was closing time, and late forbye,
when us ones braved the air.
I never saw worse (may I live or die)
than the sleet that night, an’ I says, says I:
‘You’ll find he’s for stopping there.’
But at screek o’day, through the gable pane
I watched him spur in the peltin’ rain,
an’ I juked from his rovin’ eye.

Two winters more, then the Trouble year,
when the best that a man could feel
was the pike that he kept in hidin’s near,
till the blood o’ hate an’ the blood o’ fear
would be redder nor rust on the steel.
Us ones quet from mindin’ the farms
Let them take what we gave wi’ the weight o’ our arms
from Saintfield to Kilkeel.

In the time o’ the Hurry, we had no lead
we all of us fought with the rest
an’ if e’er a one shook like a tremblin’ reed,
none of us gave neither hint nor heed,
nor ever even’d we’d guessed.
We men of the North had a word to say,
an’we said it then, in our own dour way,
an’ we spoke as we thought was best.

All Ulster over, the weemin cried
for the stan’in’ crops on the lan’.
Many’s the sweetheart and many’s the bride
would liefer ha’ gone to where he died,
and ha’ mourned her lone by her man.
But us ones weathered the thick of it
and we used to dander along and sit
in Andy’s, side by side.

What with discourse goin’ to and fro,
the night would be wearin’ thin,
yet never so late when we rose to go
but someone would say: ‘do ye min’ thon’ snow,
an ‘the man who came wanderin’in?’
and we be to fall to the talk again,
if by any chance he was one o’ them
The man who went like the win’.

Well ’twas gettin’ on past the heat o’ the year
when I rode to Newtown fair;
I sold as I could (the dealers were near
only three pounds eight for the Innish steer,
an’ nothin’ at all for the mare!)
I met M’Kee in the throng o’ the street,
says he: ‘The grass has grown under our feet
since they hanged young Warwick here.’,

And he told me that Boney had promised help
to a man in Dublin town.
Says he: ‘If you’ve laid the pike on the shelf,
you’d better go home hot-fut by yourself,
an’ once more take it down.’
So by Comber road I trotted the grey
and never cut corn until Killyleagh
stood plain on the risin’ groun’.

For a wheen o’ days we sat waitin’ the word
to rise and go at it like men,
but no French ships sailed into Cloughey Bay
and we heard the black news on a harvest day
that the cause was lost again;
and Joey and me, and Wully Boy Scott,
we agreed to ourselves we’d as lief as not
ha’ been found in the thick o’ the slain.

By Downpatrick goal I was bound to fare
on a day I’ll remember, feth;
for when I came to the prison square
the people were waitin’ in hundreds there
an’ you wouldn’t hear stir nor breath!
For the sodgers were standing, grim an’ tall,
round a scaffold built there foment the wall,
an’ a man stepped out for death!

I was brave an’ near to the edge of the throng,
yet I knowed the face again,
an’ I knowed the set, an’ I knowed the walk
an’ the sound of his strange up-country talk,
for he spoke out right an’ plain.
Then he bowed his head to the swinging rope,
whiles I said ‘Please God’ to his dying hope
and ‘Amen’ to his dying prayer
that the wrong would cease and the right prevail,
for the man that they hanged at Downpatrick gaol
was the Man from God knows where!