The act of poetry is a rebel act.
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‘Brendan Kennelly was Ireland’s most popular poet’
Great sadness as poet and Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin Brendan Kennelly (85) passes away
ONE of the nation’s best-loved poets, Brendan Kennelly, has passed away aged 85 in his native Kerry.
The former Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin died this afternoon surrounded by family at the Áras Mhuire nursing home in Listowel, to the deep sadness of so many who revered him for his literary talent, wisdom, humour and warm character.
Professor Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin since he retired in 2005, he had moved backto his native north Kerry in recent years, living in a retirement home not far from the historic village of his birth, Ballylongford.
Indeed, like Bryan MacMahon and John B Keane before him, North Kerry shaped his literary sensibilities to a great degree, the character of its people and their rich dialect infusing Kennelly’s many and much-lauded collections.
He was, in the words of friend and fellow North Kerry native poet Gabriel Fitzmaurice, ‘Ireland’s most popular poet’.
“ My soul left me last night
Gone to God
My wife's body
Wrapped in a linen shroud.
From this weak stalk, a white
Blossom has been plucked.
My life's fruitful branch, my own
Heart's darling has been ripped
From me. I am alone to-night, O God,
In this crooked world of your making.
Light was the weight of the body
That was here last night, O King.
It breaks my heart
To look at that bed.
The woman who stretched there
Is dead.
A gentle rhythm in her face,
She lay at my side a long while.
Her voice was the shadow
Of the hazel.
She was there, in that bed, alive,
Beside me.
My heart is the woman
Who has left me.
My body has passed out of my control.
It is hers alone.
I am a body in two pieces
Since the gentle one is gone.
She was one of my feet, one of my sides,
I belonged in her body,
She was one of my hands,
One of my eyes,
She was half of my body,
The very half of my soul.
How I have been cut in two
Is not easy to tell
My first love was for her eyes,
Her breasts, hands, feet.
Her body belonged to no man before me.
I know that.
Twenty years we spent together
Our days sweeter by the year.
She had eleven children.
I loved her thin fingers.
Though I am alive I am dead
Since my hazelnut fell
And twisting heaven turned this world
Into clear hell.
Let no man check me now.
Weeping is not forbidden.
Ruin is the only guest in my house
O my glowing woman.
The King of Hosts, the King of Roads
Swept her in His displeasure.
No blame to her that she
Left me here.
O King of bells and churchyards
I see her hand, I am tortured
Because her hand that never swore false oath
Is not under my head.”
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