« Return to Blog Listings
Mar. 05 2022

Booknotes marks St. Patrick’s Day 🍀

By Judith Krummeck | Posted in Booknotes, Host Blogs | Comments Off on Booknotes marks St. Patrick’s Day 🍀

As the son of Irish immigrants, the poet, writer, and musician Terence Patrick Winch has been part of Irish-American cultural life, with his work sometimes taking its subject matter from his upbringing in a Bronx immigrant neighborhood. Here, he shares some of the words and traditions of that cultural life.

 

P R A Y E R  T O  S T.  P A T R I C K

by T. Patrick Winch ©

St. Patrick, snake-hating Brit, forgive

us our sins, our wins, our losses,

forgive us our employees and bosses,

forgive us those stupid four-leaf clovers

that idiots confuse with the Holy Trinity-signifying

shamrock, especially around this time of year.

Forgive us green beer, Hostess cupcakes with green

icing, forgive us the moronic greening

of hair, food, water.  Forgive us the total

lack of meaning that now attaches to your name.

It is all truly unseemly and insane.

 

Grant us a moratorium on any more news of

the triumphs of  Michael Flatley or Frank McCourt.

God bless Paddy’s pig and Paddy Moloney’s wig,

Mickey and Andy Rooney, Rosemary and George Clooney.

Requiescat in pace, Versace et Liberace.

In nomine Dei, we’ve had enough of Leahy.

Dear saint of our isle, we’d like to send ya

an urgent plea to abolish Enya.

 

Let the bar owners pay

the poor musicians

a small fortune.

They’re earning it.

 

Banish misfortune for the Irish

over here and the Irish over there.

Banish “Danny Boy” and “The Unicorn”

while you’re at it.

 

Let there be an Irish-American fin de siècle

starring Mark McGwire and Margaret Heckler.

Grant another eighty-seven years to my Auntie Nora

and let history smile upon the Irish Diaspora.

 

Let the music be on the mark.

Lead the fiddle players from the dark

of orthodoxy. Oremus for my brother Seamus.

Let a thousand poems and songs

end the battles and undo the wrongs.

[This poem first appeared in Irish Music magazine (March 2000) and later in my book, Boy Drinkers.]

Tags:,
Avatar photo

About

Judith is WBJC's afternoon host. Her full bio can be read here.

Comments are closed.

WBJC