FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
A highlight of the Arts Festival gone by was the launch of the Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet which featured a poem of mine. (Another highlight, the highlight of the entire festival actually, was Secret Byrd in the Black Abbey, a marvellous mix of music and drama, with audience participation, and all by candlelight, which was truly magnificent and memorable).
My poems have featured in the Broadsheet before but this year was special as the publication was celebrating its 25th anniversary. Twenty five poems, by 23 poets, appeared in this 25th edition, Two poets, Anne McDarby Beck and Kevin Dowling, having two poems included – a great achievement and congrats to you both. The other poets are: Laura O’Neill, Fergal Canton, Liam O’Neill, Robert McLoughlin, Catherine Cronin, Lee Shanahan, Tais Val Penna, Angela Esmonde, Willie Joe Meally, Noel Howley, Nora Brennan, Judy Rhatigan, Siobhan O’Shea, Kayleigh Redmond, Mary Walpole, Susie Lamb, Eamonn Donovan, Mary Malin, Roisin Sheehy, Christina Warner and yours truly.
My poem, Legacy’ (In Memory Of Jack), is dedicated to Jack Hayes, a neighbour. Jack was one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known. Above all I loved the warm welcome he always gave me when I came knocking on his door asking if I could come in to watch some soccer match on his television (we didn’t have one). It was with Jack that I watched a memorable sporting moment of my life: Glasgow Celtic, the ‘Lisbon Lions’, beating Inter Milan to win the 1967 European Cup – the first British club to do so. I was a dedicated Celtic fan and still am. And when our school gave us ‘Silver Circle’ cards to sell for a 12-week draw to raise much-needed funds it was to Jack Hayes I made my first port of call because Jack signed up immediately, and for the full 12 weeks – a joy, when our door-to-door ‘selling’ wasn’t always successful.
After the sport, Jack would bring me out to his back yard and the shed where he had constructed a loom and continued the weaving he had spent his life perfecting in the Woollen Mills. Jack was quietly proud of the loom he had created. This pimply teenager didn’t fully appreciate what it meant to Jack, that this was more than just a hobby; this was a huge, and important, part of his retired life.
I composed Legacy for Jack’s daughter, Phil Larkin, and read it at an exhibition of her paintings which I was delighted to launch in the County Hall some years ago. The warm memories well up now as I write this and I thank Jack for gifting me this poem.
The Broadsheet is free and available in our city library, in libraries around the county and in the Butler Gallery. I dedicated the reading of Legacy to another kind and gentle Jack – Jack Byer, all of 87, visiting my wife and I from Philadelphia. I met Jack over forty years ago at Listowel Writers Week and we have been the best of friends ever since.
Legacy
(In Memory Of Jack)
You left behind a loom
that no one works, or can:
a mongrel, a rickety thing,
rigged up by yourself
from bits and bobs
and a lifetime
of weaving
at the mill.
In the poor light
of an outhouse
you pottered,
plied your magic
wooing colours
of the sun and sky
from creaking timber
and tired, grey steel,
That shed of yours
was a hive of vibrant
clacking activity.
It’s silent now.
Bolted. Locked.
Your careful,
slippered-feet no longer
amble to its door.
But in the homes
of neighbours,
family, friends
above a fireplace
or on some wall
your magic lingers,
brightening darkened
hallways, dim-lit rooms.
