Poet - Mathghamhain O Hifearnain (Mahon O'Heffernan) (fl. 1585–1624)

As part of my forthcoming piece on Form I recall reading these lines or seeing them mentioned:

A poem of close-knit skill,
I have walked all Munster with it
from market cross to cross
for a year, and I’m no better off.

Gé dán sin go snadhmadh bhfis,
gach margadh ó chrois go crois
do shiobhail mé an Mhumhain leis -
ní breis é a-nuraidh ná a-nois.

Ó hIfearnáin, Mathghamhain (Mahon O'Heffernan) (fl. 1585–1624), prominent Munster bardic poet. 

--

I ask, who will buy a poem?
It holds right thoughts of scholars.
Who needs it? Will anyone take it?
A fine poem to make him immortal.

A poem of close-knit skill,
I have walked all Munster with it
from market cross to cross
for a year, and I’m no better off.

Not a man or a woman would give me
down-payment, no tiniest groat.
And no one would tell me why
—ignored by Gael and stranger.

What use is a craft like this,
a shame though it has to die?
Making combs would earn more honour.
Why would anyone take to verse.

Corc of Cashel is dead, and Cian,
who horded no cattle or cash,
men happy to pay their poets.
So goodbye to the seed of Éibhear.

They kept the palm for giving
until Cobhthach was lost, and Tál.
Many I leave unmentioned
that I might have made poems for still.

I’m a ship with a ruined cargo
now the famous Fitzgeralds are gone.
No answer. A terrible case.
It is all in vain that I ask.

--

Sources:
English version - The New Oxford book of Irish verse
by Kinsella, Thomas

Irish version - the stanza in Irish is from the MacMorris Project - Maynooth university
https://macmorris.maynoothuniversity.ie/what-is-bardic-poetry
(I would totally appreciate a full version if anyone might ever have time to send it to me)

https://macmorris.maynoothuniversity.ie/map
https://macmorris.maynoothuniversity.ie/map?id=135

Horse / cart lol
https://www.poet.ie/p/projects.html

Poet - Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz was a reviser of his poetry, ascribing to the Valéry view: 

"A poem is never finished, it's only abandoned". 

A thing that caught my attention years and years ago was the fact that he may have revised 100 times and at the time I thought how to find the time - perhaps this is the weakness in the modern, promulgated by the $100+k MFA Yanks (all in a hurry to vomit what they've written, measuring it on a return on the dollar.

Stanley Kunitz's poetry emphasized spareness, musicality, emotional truth, and organic development.

I always loved...

End of Summer
By Stanley Kunitz

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones
Amaded, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was forever over.

Already the iron door of the North
Clangs open: birds,leaves,snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

 --

The great Kunitz - Gesamtkunstwerk 

Nua or Not

My regular visitors / compadres said..
jaysus Des flag up a new / old poem
My material goes back 30 years or so and it is like the weather - some days 'raining' some not..
Technically it's a bollox that pub date / chrono date / written date cannot be separated so my ostensibly elegant solution is:

Nua aris.. my poems..

so far in January 2026 I've "published"

Poem - Palatic Paraplegic

https://www.poet.ie/2014/12/poem-palatic-paraplegic.html

Poem - The Derry bus

https://www.poet.ie/2008/07/poem-derry-bus.html

Poem - Boy Soldiers

https://www.poet.ie/2001/07/poem-boy-soldiers.html

Back to Valéry 

"In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished - a word that for them has no sense - but abandoned; and this abandonment, whether to the flames or to the public (and which is the result of weariness or an obligation to deliver) is a kind of an accident to them, like the breaking off of a reflection, which fatigue, irritation, or something similar has made worthless."

"Aux yeux de ces amateurs d’inquiétude et de perfection, un ouvrage n’est jamais achevé, – mot qui pour eux n’a aucun sens, – mais abandonné ; et cet abandon, qui le livre aux flammes ou au public (et qu’il soit l’effet de la lassitude ou de l’obligation de livrer) est une sorte d’accident, comparable à la rupture d’une réflexion, que la fatigue, le fâcheux ou quelque sensation viennent rendre nulle."

Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, critic, author, polymath.