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Neil Carpathois

Contributing Columnist

St. Patrick’s Day is coming! St. Patrick’s Day is coming! Leprechauns, whiskey, potatoes, the color green, a love of dancing, hospitality, shamrocks…What do you think of when you think of the Irish? I think of these, but mostly I think of poetry.

No one really knows for sure why Ireland’s contribution to world literature has been so disproportionately large for such a relatively small island. Indeed, Irish verse holds the honor of being the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe. In other words, the Irish knew that poetry was for the people, and that it should read and sound like the common people—and not some artificially ornate creation for a select few. There is a mystique with the Irish, and their love of words and word play. They turn suffering into song, and the world is a playground for their wit and biting humor.

May those who love us, love us;

and those who don’t love us,

may God turn their hearts;

and if He doesn’t turn their hearts,

may he turn their ankles

so we’ll know them by their limping.

That anonymous prayer displays the famous Irish wit, as does the following toast:

When you drink, you get drunk.

When you get drunk, you fall asleep.

When you sleep, you surely can commit no sin.

When you don’t sin you go to heaven.

So let’s all get drunk and go to heaven.

Perhaps the greatest Irish poet of all-time, is William Butler Yeats. Here is one of my favorites of his, in which he makes us ponder, on a more serious note, the origins and true identity of the self:

Before The World Was Made

If I make the lashes dark

And the eyes more bright

And the lips more scarlet,

Or ask if all be right

From mirror after mirror,

No vanity’s displayed:

I’m looking for the face I had

Before the world was made.

What if I look upon a man

As though on my beloved,

And my blood be cold the while

And my heart unmoved?

Why should he think me cruel

Or that he is betrayed?

I’d have him love the thing that was

Before the world was made.

Have a great St. Patrick’s Day, all. And as the Irish say: “As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point in the wrong direction.”

Address correspondence and poem submissions to: ncarpathios@shawnee.edu or Neil Carpathios, Shawnee State University, Dept. of English & Humanities, 940 Second Street, Portsmouth, OH 45662. (740-351-3478).