From: dennisk@mail.newsguy.com   
      
   ...well, no one reads s.c.i. anymore, do they - does anyone even have   
   newsreaders to cut through all    
   the trolling and OT nonsense that still floods into all ngs?   
      
   But I couldn't let the death of John Montague go without notice here where we   
   once talked about such    
   things, & practised how to ignore trolls & fake news & the like long before   
   they became headlines in RL.   
      
   This is one of his best-known poems, & I'm rather surprised to realise it was   
   never previously    
   posted to s.c.i.... so it seems fitting to do that now, in honour of the   
   Brooklyn-born,    
   Tyrone-raised first Professor of Poetry in Ireland.   
      
   in memoriam, John Montague (28 Feb, 1929 - Dec 10, 2016)   
      
   A Lost Tradition   
      
   All around, shards of a lost tradition:   
    From the Rough Field I went to school   
   In the Glen of the Hazels. Close by   
   Was the bishopric of the Golden Stone;   
   The cairn of Carleton's homesick poem.   
      
   Scattered over the hills, tribal-   
   And placenames, uncultivated pearls.   
   No rock or ruin, dun or dolmen   
   But showed memory defying cruelty   
   Through an image-encrusted name.   
      
   The heathery gap where the Rapparee,   
   Shane Barnagh, saw his brother die -   
   On a summer's day the dying sun   
   Stained its colours to crimson:   
   So breaks the heart, Brish-mo-Cree.   
      
   The whole landscape a manuscript   
   We had lost the skill to read,   
   A part of our past disinherited;   
   But fumbled, like a blind man,   
   Along the fingertips of instinct.   
      
   The last Gaelic speaker in the parish   
   When I stammered my school Irish   
   One Sunday after mass, crinkled   
   A rusty litany of praise:   
   Tá an Ghaeilge againn arís . . .   
      
   Tír Eoghain: Land of Owen,   
   Province of the O'Niall;   
   The ghostly tread of O'Hagan's   
   Barefoot gallowglasses marching   
   To merge forces in Dun Geanainn   
      
   Push southward to Kinsale!   
   Loudly the war-cry is swallowed   
   In swirls of black rain and fog   
   As Ulster's pride, Elizabeth's foemen,   
   Founder in a Munster bog.   
      
   ~~~   
   A Lost Tradition   
   John Montague   
   Collected Poems   
   1995, Wake Forest University Press   
   ~~~   
      
   	*We have the Irish again.   
      
      
   respectfully submitted,   
   K. E. Dennis   
      
   --    
      
   | K. E. Dennis     
   |   
   | Maireann lorg an phinn, ach nímhaireann an béal a chan   
   | The trace of the pen lives on, but not the mouth that sang   
   |   
   | A little bit of Culture... is now at http://web.newsguy.com/a-   
   ittle-bit-of-Irish-culture/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)