Free Web Hosting Provider - Web Hosting - E-commerce - High Speed Internet - Free Web Page
Search the Web

index Online entry Postal Entry Favourite Poems Links

Stony Grey Soil

 O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.

You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick tongued mumble.

You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life conquering plough!
The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.

You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food

You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!

Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I stilll stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisoned pen.

His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.

Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.

Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) was born in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland, the son of a Patrick Kavanaghcobbler-cum-small farmer. He left school at the age of thirteen, apparently destined to plough the 'stony-grey soil' rather than write about it, but 'I dabbled in verse,' he said, 'and it became my life.'

It has been said that his poems celebrate the scenery and land of his native Inniskeen, although to me his poetry reveals an ambivalence, almost a bitterness, to the poverty of his upbringing and I don't think I would use the word "celebrate".  He certainly invokes them, with beautiful clarity.

In 1936 his first book of verse, Ploughman and Other Poems, was published, and in 1938 he followed this up with The Green Fool, an autobiography.