Gilgamesh O’Malley left his home in Fermanagh
With dreams of steaming plates of Irish stew.
He ate his last potato last time Sheamus paid the rent.
Since then, there’s not been very much to chew.
The lords of the Ascendancy express paternal care
By flaunting all their privileges of wealth,
While tenant souls like Gilgamesh subsist on gospel words
Unsuited for the maintenance of health.
The famine’s grip was guaranteed by what was done to help;
The landlords’ ledgers chronicled events.
The mighty Earl of Lucan and the rest lived absentee,
Their middlemen kept busy squeezing rents.
So, Gilgamesh O’Malley left his home in Fermanagh,
And climbed aboard a packet ship in Cobh.
He authored his own epic as an immigrant at large,
To brave the flood and find a decent job.
Gilgamesh O'Malley left his home for foreign shores.
Should the Fates condemn your destiny, his fortune could be yours.
Lucan Cranach the elder
as a portraitist voyeur
excelled in his faraway faces
glassy -eyed &highlighted traces
This Lord
life’s flawed
Has strife
hits wife
Divorce
on course
In house
his spouse
He kills
blood spills
NOT wife
more strife
He fled
girl dead
Sand dune
clothes strewn
He lied
he’d died
3/5/19
In their coloured anoraks
I see young people canoeing
swinging their oars as they cut and dip
into the frothy waters.
Around me, daffodil bulbs
shoot stalks out of damp earth,
and falling water clears my head
of office banter and tedious days.
In their coloured anoraks
I see young people canoeing
swinging their oars as they cut and dip
into the frothy waters.
Around me, daffodil bulbs
shoot stalks out of damp earth,
and falling water clears my head
of office banter and tedious days.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.