Poem: ‘External Return’

Eternal Return

My sixteen year old daughter comes to me to complain about
Patrick Kavanagh.
O great irony, hardly are the words out of her mouth
And I can see those fucking potatoes,
The drills and the furrows of old bloody Monaghan!

Why do we do it? Why does every generation get subjected
To this kind of shit?
Isn’t Life bad enough without having to force poetry
About bleeding potatoes down their bloody throats!

And then, just as I am almost in despair,
And I’m a bloody poet myself,
Her voice pipes up again, and she adds;
“Although, Epic isn’t half bad, at least he mentions Homer!”

And, I see again my reading of the poem through her eyes,
When I too saw the ancient importance ricocheting
In Paddy Boy,
As she too recognised the importance of Homer
And his epic take on Life.

Staring across the kitchen table at her,
With not a potato in sight,
I somehow saw the great blind ancient hovering above us
Monumentally human, whispering to us both
Across the infinite.