Happy St. Pat's Day 2010

When I went to Holy Angels Grade School in West Oak Lane, the common saying around St. Patrick's Day was: "There are only two kinds of people in the world: the Irish, and those who want to be Irish." 

It was that kind of humorous bravado that kept the Irish alive through 800 years of slavery and slaughter.

For a quick review of that slavery and slaughter, see The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan. He captures the Irish condition using the life of Thomas Francis Meagher.
Here are some photos, Irish dancing, and Eamon playing violin from a St. Patrick's party at my parish, St. Michael the Archangel. 

We raised $100,000 to bring down the cost of the mortgage on the new education wing. Civilization is a beautiful thing.
The Irish step dancers are from the Teelin Irish Dance Company. These young ones are stunning. 

They are out of Columbia, MD. 

These are my people...and I love them.

This is the poem I wrote for Eamon when he was a fetus inside his mother's womb. He is the 15-year old playing violin in the video above. I wanted him to know the struggles of his Irish ancestors via poetry.

Eamon Patrick’s Poem

  

Kicking your mother

from inside the liquid

universe of the womb

 

I feel so crippled

and broken

when considering

I have so much to teach you

and only the remaining

lifetime to do so.

 

It is hopeless, really,

except these two gems

that came down from a long, long,

line of men and women who survived

centuries of Viking invasions

whose barbarity was only surpassed

by the neighbor invader

who considered genocide

by the rule of law

such a jolly good adventure

and stole all the food

in the very middle

of the famine of all famines.

 

Through it all,

your ancestors survived

tenaciously creative

and green as moss

on the back of a stone

on the gentle Shannon river

and these two gems skip across

that great river to the Delaware

where once, when wondering

of ancestral roots I asked my father,

“Dad, what is it to be American?”

 

“Work.” “What?” I asked.

“Work.” he repeated. 

“Your grandfather worked.

I worked.  You’ll work.”

“That’s all?” “That’s all.” he answered.

  

“Then what is it to be Irish?”

“Hilarity.” He didn’t miss a beat again.

“Hilarity.  You gotta make ‘em laugh.”

So, there it is Eamon Patrick. 

 

If God takes me

before I get to teach you

all you need to know,

let these two words suffice: 

work and hilarity.

 

Work and hilarity

saved your people

over centuries of warfare, pestilence,

invasion, slavery, defeat, and famine

and eventually defeated

the greatest power on earth

so that I could write you this poem.

 

Work and hilarity

can carry you to the universe

and to the other planets

and when you find

a particularly hard planet,

name it “Work,”

and when you find

an especially funny planet,

name it “Hilarity.”

 

No matter what the planet or year,

work and hilarity are in your genes

as am I, and all of my dreams.

  

 

Bruce Curley

Germantown, MD

February 10, 1996