...and gael force winds

The Headless Body From the Irish Gaelic of Aonghas O Dalaigh (16th century) A lament for the rebel leader Fiach McHugh O'Byrne               I see your body headless stuck on Dublin’s steel spikes. The sight stuns me senseless. We poets never lost your likes.   Your body impaled before me a spectacle to our great crowd. Today your horror all may see, yesterday your courage our byword.   Once a fine figure with grand grace, now as I behold you horribly quartered my heart drains my face, my mind dismembers my memory.   The sight blinds even my blindside, weakens the strength of my stride. Seeing you spiked tightens my hide. Your tragedy shouts worldwide.   Now who’ll help the poor, patronize our teachers and poets too? O body, now that you hang headless ‘twere better not to live after you.   Who now will recompense the scholars, give hospitality, entertain? With you butchered so, in quarters, who will provide our wine?   Your four limbs hacked by butchery stuck on four sharp steel stakes before me here in Dublin city beggars my heart with blindness.   Your headless torso has now truly left green Leinster’s good men without the harp of hospitality to cultured conversation.   Your tortured torso’s a woeful sight. Giver of weapons and horses, hacked apart by an alien’s hatchet, limbs chopped off with curses.   Legion the laments of your history. Our hero’s headless horror stuck up on spikes indifferently, changed in colour and contour.   Telling tales of their travels like lords I heard foreign friends in your fort; gossip for girls, versed by your bards. Shut silent now that court.   Great grief! Beheaded in your glory who spoiled enemy territory, you’re now denied the honour our history should give your buried body.   Before I witnessed your sacrifice brave son of Aodh’s brave kind, my grief’s that my heart did not rise, that my eye was not blind.   We’ll never again see to emulate your strong stride, warm hand; no more admire your noble head’s shape, a noble image of Ireland.                                        Desmond  O'Grady     +2014                     ....