Poem
Ciaran Carson
1798
1798
1798
I met her in the garden where the poppies grow,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine;
And her cheeks were like roses, or blood dropped on snow;
Her pallid lips were red with Papal Spanish wine.
Lulled in these wild flowers, with dance and delight,
I took my opportunity and grasped her hand.
She then disclosed the eyelids of her second sight,
And prophesied that I’d forsake my native land.
Before I could protest, she put her mouth to mine,
And sucked the broken English from my Gaelic tongue.
She wound me in her briary arms of eglantine.
Two centuries have gone, yet she and I abide,
Like emblems of a rebel song no longer sung,
Or snowy blossoms drifting down the mountainside.
© 1999, Ciaran Carson
From: The Twelfth of Never
Publisher: Picador, London
From: The Twelfth of Never
Publisher: Picador, London
Ciaran Carson
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1948)
Ciaran Carson was born and grew up in Belfast, where Irish was the first language of the family home; Carson learnt English playing on the streets. From an early age, he was ‘always aware of language, how it operates. How if you say it in one language it’s not the same as saying it in another’ (as stated in a Guardian interview). Carson’s poetry is interested in the profound interdependence of ...
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Poems of Ciaran Carson
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1798
I met her in the garden where the poppies grow,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine;
And her cheeks were like roses, or blood dropped on snow;
Her pallid lips were red with Papal Spanish wine.
Lulled in these wild flowers, with dance and delight,
I took my opportunity and grasped her hand.
She then disclosed the eyelids of her second sight,
And prophesied that I’d forsake my native land.
Before I could protest, she put her mouth to mine,
And sucked the broken English from my Gaelic tongue.
She wound me in her briary arms of eglantine.
Two centuries have gone, yet she and I abide,
Like emblems of a rebel song no longer sung,
Or snowy blossoms drifting down the mountainside.
From: The Twelfth of Never
1798
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