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The tomb of Michael Collins (to Agonize Silone,) by Denis Devlin _1956 Much I rember of the dead of men, but his I most remember, most of all, more then the familiar and forgetful Ghosts who leave our memory too soon- Oh, what voracious fathers bore him down! It was all sky and heather, wet and rock, no one was there but larks stiff-legged hares and flowers bloodstained. Then, oh, our shame so massive Only a god embraced it and the angel Whose hurt and misty rifle shot him down. One by one the enemy dies off; As the sun, grows old, the dead increase, We love the more the futher from we're born ! The bullet found him where the bullet ceased, and gale and gall went inconspicuous down. There are four green fields we loved in boyhood, There are some reasons it's no loss to die for! Even it's loss to for having lived; It is inside our life the angle happen's Life, the gift god accepts or not, Which Michael took with hand, with harsh, grey eye's, he was loved by women and men, He fought a week of Sunday's and by night He asked what happened and he knew what was- O lord ! How right that them you loved die young! He's what I was when by chiming river Two loyal children long ago embraced- but what I was is one thing, what remember Another thing, how memory becomes knowledge- Most I remember him, how man is courage. And sad, oh sad, that glen with one thin stream He met his death in ; and a farmer told me There was but one small bird to shoot: it sang "Better Beast and know your end , and die That man with murderous angel's in his head" I tell these tales- I was twelve years old that time. Those of the past were heroes in my mind : Edward the Bruce whose brother Robert made him of Ireland, king; Wolf Tone and Silken Thomas And Prince Red Hugh O'Donnell most of all. The newsboys knew and apple and orange woman Where was his shifty lodging Tuesday night; No one betrayed him to the foreigner, No protestant or catholic broke and ran But murmured in their heart: here was a man ! Then came that mortal day he lost and laughed at, He knew it as he left the armoured car ; The sky held in it's rain and kept it's breath ; Over the Liffey and the Lee,' the gulls , They told his fortune which he knew, his death. Walking to vespers in my Jesuit school, The sky was come and gone ; "O captain, My captain" Walt Whitman was the lesson that afternoon- How sometimes death magnifies him who dies, And some, though mortal, have achieved their race |
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