feeding my senses ...

Given all the canal-related mania yesterday, thought it would be appropriate to blip Patrick Kavanagh's famous poem today ...

... he reputedly wrote this poem whilst recovering from a life-threatening operation (he did have a lung removed in 1954!) and apparently recuperated by walking along the banks of the Grand Canal in Dublin; where there is now a statue of him sitting on a canal-side bench :-)

This verse is taken from the pictured 2005, collected poems volume; and is a wonderful affirmation of the restorative powers of blue, open-space:


Canal Bank Walk

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

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Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)

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