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 “The winter is coming”, I hear the birds pine. The Mist’s On The Mountains
By Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©
The mist’s on the mountains, the skies are all grey.
The shadows of night fall fast on the day.
The sentinels of summer prepare to change guard,
And saluting the winter, she retires from the yard.
The school books and jotters in windows are seen.
Make way for an gheimhreadh1, goodbye to the green.
The barley is cut, is baled and away,
And empty the look on the acres today.
And the strolls by the stream or the bridge down below
Must surrender to fires that are high and aglow.
“The winter is coming”, I hear the birds pine.
“Winter, cold winter and all things are dying”.
All things of the earth and the sky coloured lead,
And poor folks regarding ‘The Christmas’ with dread.
The Postie is eyeing the tea that is hot,
And cupping his cold hands: “Tis rainin’ a lot.”
Apples and ripe fruit mouthwatering, mature,
Are stored for the winter till Spring, to endure.
And children change hurleys for sitting-room games,
And cuddle to books by warm turf-fire flames.
Coughing and sneezing and wheezing et al,
Disregarded by Doc, who puts up with it all.
It’s time to remember the harvest is done.
Time to think fondly of some distant one.
In foggy cold cities, in far away climes,
Time to remember far happier times.
The town’s news reporter in courtroom and chambers,
Wearies of damp talk and longs for the embers.
The curate is preaching of crimes and of sin,
Maybe secretly longing for a brandy or gin.
Winter, cold winter, tis Nature’s own law,
Jack Frost is in session now wait for the thaw.
All natural happenings are merely like life.
You can savour hay sweet like a newly got wife.
But when the hay’s saved, you must forage anew,
In the everyday way of a love that is true.
And there’s joy in the winter if only we look,
Just listen in bed, to the rain, with that book.
Awaiting the light and the warm hope of spring,
We pause before flames and summer songs sing.
And so goes the cycle of all things that live.
You laugh in the summer, in winter you grieve.
All the while hoping and dreaming the best,
As the snow from the heavens comes softly to rest.
So, too is life, of snow and of sun.
You may weep all you like, but tis how things are done.
So, I laugh at the winter and keep up the heart,
And the snows of today will tomorrow depart.
Winter, cold winter and all things are dying.
Winter cold winter, I hear the birds sighing.
That’s how goes the universe and all that’s of earth,
Darkness and starkness and sunshine and mirth.
End.
[“an gheimhreadh” 1 – Irish language translation – “the winter”.
Tom Ryan, “Iona,” Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary
Autumn In Thurles
By Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©
How lovely sweet autumn everywhere
In the beet leaved acres,
Under the yellow-leaved light,
Of the wistful October sun,
Engolding now the time.
Enriching the red and black and berried colours
By coloured roadside hedges all around.
The mellow mist is on the mountains,
The shadows fall fast on the declining day,
And life’s declining years.
The red and brown and golden leaves,
Kissed by the yellowing sun,
Adorn the roads and pathways of our lives,
A carpet for the guest of winter
To tread upon anon.
Now we wonder, in the Autumn-witching hour
Whom would we wish to be with us.
Shouting children down the Mall
Chase secret shadows of their dreams.
In the night, lit by the yellow hue
Of street lights in river reflected,
The perennial ghosts of Halloween
Whisper a magic in their ears,
Cast spells for a lifetime long.
Oh, who would we require to be with us,
As we gambol down the riverside path again,
Fists raised at the laughing moon
And the mocking mysterious shadows
Of all the days of youth.
Now we wonder in the Autumn witching hour
Who would we wish to follow
By secret paths under the stars
Of childhood long ago.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary
Soul Mates
By Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©
In a quiet moment
Thinking of nothing,
In a quiet place
Where I hear my heart beat,
My soul aches
For one who is absent,
And I,
Oh I
Am so lonely for you.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
Almost twenty years ago this month; on Wednesday 15th August 1998, an act of terrorism known as the ‘Omagh Car Bombing’ took place, in Omagh town, [ Irish Óghmaighan or Ómaigh meaning “The virgin plain” ], in Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The bombing was carried out by a group calling themselves the Real Irish Republican Army, (IRA), latter a Provisional IRA break away splinter group, who totally opposed the IRA’s ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement. Latter had been agreed on 10th April 1998, and overwhelmingly further approved in two referendums in both the North and South of Ireland, in May 1998.
The Good Friday Agreement gives prominence to the ‘principle of consent’, which affirmed the legitimacy of an aspiration to a United Ireland, while recognising a current wish for the majority of people living in Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom (UK).
The bombing, on that day, killed 29 people (including a woman pregnant with twins) and injured 220 others. This death toll was higher than any other, one, single incident of terrorism during the period that history records as ‘The Troubles’, (1968-1998).
Omagh One August
By Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©
On the eve of the Sabbath in August, they crucified Jesus again,
Bombing the good and the gentle, the women, the children, the men.
Our people are weeping forever, their blood on the streets of shame,
As history and history makers mock with the old refrain.
Oh, more than our tears for the trouble, oh, more than mere words for the dead.
Oh, heaven and pity embrace us and gentleness rule us instead.
What now for the Gentle Seer? What now for life’s joyful song?
And I long, how I long for the music that is neither right nor wrong.
On the eve of the Sabbath in August, when we the people have died
Innocence bombed to oblivion on the altar of dubious pride.
On the eve of the Sabbath in August, forever in time to be,
The good, the innocent, the gentle will praise humanity.
Will triumph, as triumph they must, when sad, shameful history is done,
When hearts, now fashioned in metal, are loving in unison.
On the eve of the Sabbath in August, whoever, whatever to blame,
Oh, love now where is your grandeur? Oh, history where is your shame?
End
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
 “Military Manoeuvres”, a wonderful painting from 1891, by the artist and Royal Hibernian Academy member Richard Moynan. [It should be noted that Richard’s wife; Susanna Mary Moynan, was born here in Thurles, Co. Tipperary and both were married in the Thurles district in 1884; the same year the GAA was founded.] Games Of My Childhood
By Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©
We whipped a spinning wooden top along the road
With a flick from a bamboo stick and twine,
Or followed glossy, coloured marbles in the street,
Or, playing beds, hopped on a chalky line.
We climbed into our hobby house in the tree,
With bamboo rod and gut we fished for eels,
Or built a U.S. Fort Apache strong,
And from cakes of mucky mud made magic meals.
In that summer long ago, just out the road,
We drank the sparkling water from the well,
And played our secret agents in the trees
Vowing to die before we’d ever tell.
We hurled the morning, afternoon and night,
And pucked the leather ball along the road.
And quarrelled with a frenzy, in our fights
That movie stars would never have allowed.
We splashed in the mighty ocean of the “Lake”,
Fighting naval battles we had known,
And drank our Sunday lemonade and biscuits ate
Under a great oak tree we called our own.
And there we spun our yarns and told our dreams
And thought the day eternal and a joy,
And back to the road, to play our childhood games
Before the bed and a comic to enjoy.
The times were hard and little was there then
And everyone was poor and just the same,
But we were boys and mad to conquer men
And fight for glory, fortune and for fame.
We had our little thoughts and childhood dreams
Within our happy world of family way back then,
An ideal country of the mind, it seems,
Gone, but in memory to warm our hearts again.
End
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
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