Tuesday poem: When will my time come
Monday, October 31st, 2011Michael D. Higgins’ time has now come, and is being celebrated all over Ireland. What a joy it is to have a poet President, and especially one who seems a grand guy! And how prescient it was of him to have written this poem. He’s got scenery now, in spades.
When Will My Time Come
by Michael D. Higgins
When will my time come for scenery
And will it be too late?
After all
Decades ago I was never able
To get excited
About filling the lungs with ozone
On Salthill Prom.
And when the strangers
To whom I gave a lift
Spoke to me of the extraordinary
Light in the Western sky;
I often missed its changes.
And, later, when words were required
To intervene at the opening of Art Exhibitions,
It was not the same.
What is this tyranny of head that stifles
The eyes, the senses,
All play on the strings of the heart.
And, if there is a healing,
It is in the depth of a silence,
Whose plumbed depths require
A journey through realms of pain
That must be faced alone.
The hero, setting out,
Will meet an ally at a crucial moment.
But the journey home
Is mostly alone.
When my time comes
I will have made my journey
And through all my senses will explode
The evidence of light
And air and water, fire and earth.
I live for that moment.
There’s a glorious celebratory song by the Saw Doctors – ‘Michael D. Rockin’ in the Dáil’ – here. My recommendation is that (a) you turn it up to a loud celebratory level, and (b) that you dance to it. That’s what poets do.