Amid all the faux Irish stuff floating around today, my parents will be on the radio playing authentic Irish music on WNHU 88.7 FM, out of the University of New Haven in West Haven CT.
You can listen to them live streaming here.
Another of my favorite Irish poems, this one by Austin Clarke (the Irish poet, not the Canadian novelist)
The Blackbird Of Derrycairn
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now!
Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins
Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.
Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway.
He found the forest track, he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell, there,
Why men must welcome in the daylight.
He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shouts of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.
In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell gives a glad sound.
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! That song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.
Beannachtai na Feile Padraig!
