If I couldn't be American I would be Irish.
You wouldn't like to be Irish Novi. You despise most of the things that we value. Words and poetry and weaving tapestries with language, we love that. It's a big part of the culture stemming from the old Bardic tradition.
On Raglan Road, on an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair
Would weave a snare
That I would one day rue
I saw the danger
And I passed
Along the enchanted way
And I said grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day
Raglan Road is an ordinary street in the centre of Dublin and yet Patrick Kavanagh romanticizes it in a way that touches all Dublin people, in fact all Irish people. When I was teaching in an inner city primary school, one of the stand out moments for me was hearing that poem, sung in its song form, by an eight year old local boy. His parents were heroin addicts and he lived with his grandparents. Lovely kid. He sang it at a teacher's retirement do and he sang his heart out with such reverence for the words and music, the song 'given' to him, as we say in Ireland, by his grandfather. The poetry, the music must pass on from generation to generation.
youtube.com/watch?v=FdHr6jdQyTM
