Conference tallis::celt

1158.0. "A Christmas Childhood {Poem}" by KITVS::VONSUCK () Wed Dec 23 1992 09:32

	A   C H R I S T M A S    C H I L D H O O D 

					Patrick Kavanagh.
					(Collected Poems 1964)

			I

	One side of the potato-pits was white with frost -
	  How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
	 And when we put our ears to the paling-post
		The music that came out was magical.

	The light between the ricks of hay and straw
	was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree
	 With its December-glinting fruit we saw - 
	O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me.

	  To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
	And death the germ within it! Now and then
		I can remember something of the gay
		Garden that was childhood's. Again
	
	  The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
	  A green stone lying sideways in a ditch
	Or any common sight the transfigured face
	 Of a beauty that the world did not touch.


			II

		My father played the melodeon
    		     Outside at our gate;
	      There were stars in the morning east
		And they danced to his music.

	   Across the wild bogs his melodeon called
		To Lennons and Callans.
	     As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
	  I knew some strange thing had happened.

	     Outside the cow-house my mother
		   Made the sound of milking;
	   The light of her stable-lamp	was a star
	And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

	     A water-hen screeched in the bog,
		   Mass-going feet
	   Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
	Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

	     My child poet picked out the letters
		   On the grey stone,
	In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
	     The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

			Cassiopeia was over
		    Cassidy's hanging hill,
	   I looked and three whin bushes rode across 
	     The horizon - the Three Wise Kings.

		    An old man passing said:
		     'Can't he make it talk' -
		The melodeon. I hid in the doorway
	   And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

		I nicked six nicks on the door-post
		   With my penknife's big blade - 
	     There was a little one for cutting tobacco.
		And I was six Christmases of age.

		 My father played the melodeon,
		    My mother milked the cows,
	     And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
		    On the Virgin Mary's blouse.