Brendan Kennelly

[crystal]

Brendan Kennelly (b. 1936) is the prolific author of over twenty books of poetry as well as plays, novels and criticism. Born in Ballylongford in Co. Kerry, Kennelly was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin for thirty years. In his native country Kennelly is public property, both popular and controversial, not least for his collections Cromwell and The Book of Judas both of which generated many column inches on publication. Counting the rock band U2 amongst his friends and appearing in car adverts on Irish TV, Kennelly straddles both the public and private spheres in his unofficial role of "Ireland's poetry confessor" (The Independent).





Poems published in Translatum

• Hope
• Poem from a Three year old

More poems by Brendan Kennelly
Poetry Archive

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[crystal]

Brendan Kennelly, Poem from a Three year old

And will the flowers die?

And will the people die?

And every day do you grow old, do I
grow old, no I’m not old, do
flowers grow old?

Old things – do you throw them out?

Do you throw old people out?

And how you know a flower that’s old?

The petals fall, the petals fall from flowers,
and do the petals fall from people too,
every day more petals fall until the
floor where I would like to play I
want to play is covered with old
flowers and people all the same
together lying there with petals fallen
on the dirty floor I want to play
the floor you come and sweep
with the huge broom.

The dirt you sweep, what happens that,
what happens all the dirt you sweep
from flowers and people, what
happens all the dirt? Is all the
dirt what’s left of flowers and
people, all the dirt there in a
heap under the huge broom that
sweeps everything away?

Why you work so hard, why brush
and sweep to make a heap of dirt?
And who will bring new flowers?
And who will bring new people? Who will
bring new flowers to put in water
where no petals fall on to the
floor where I would like to
play? Who will bring new flowers
that will not hang their heads
like tired old people wanting sleep?
Who will bring new flowers that
do not split and shrivel every
day? And if we have new flowers,
will we have new people too to
keep the flowers alive and give
them water?

And will the new young flowers die?

And will the new young people die?

And why?


Για ανάγνωση του ποιήματος από τον ίδιο τον ποιητή δείτε http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=204

[spiros]

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
 
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
 
I do not think that they will sing to me.

[crystal]

Εμφανής η ομοιότητα στο ύφος και ειδικά στην μορφή των ερωτήσεων. Το ζήτημα είναι πολύ πιο βαθύ φυσικά με τις απαρχές του στον πρώιμο ρομαντισμό, παραπέμπει ακόμα και στον αγαπημένο σου Wordsworth με το Tables Turned. Cosmology and Ontology of Romanticism... There is no real word... we are mere shadows of the ultimum reality, mere perceptions of a wider wholeness...

[Frederique]

[...] Kennelly is a much-loved poet in Ireland, but his overall place in the Irish poetic canon may be somewhat controversial, Some consider “Cromwell” to be a major work, one of the most important Irish poems of the twentieth century. Others may prefer to think of him, despite his academic standing, as anti-intellectual or lacking in complexity in a period when modernist poetry, from TS Eliot to the later works of William Butler Yeats, tended to be esoteric and difficult.[...]

[Frederique]

Brendan Kennelly, Hope

Like lightning in dark skies
I love to brighten up dark lives
and rid sad hearts of lonely cries.

I have one fierce enemy, despair,
all driven energy, forever there,
rips hearts apart and doesn’t care.

I care. Let’s walk together now,
help me to help, to grow and thrive
and let the future shine alive.

Despair would murder it and make you
guilty. Let’s talk now as we walk and see
the future reaching out to you and me.

Our skies are brightening up today.
I love your company, dear friend,
and always will, come what may.

I dream of being the living song
everyone would love to sing.
Impossible? No. That’s me. Let’s keep walking

until both our hearts are singing.

Source: Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre