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Searc's Web Guide to 20th Century Ireland - Seamus Keenan (born 1947)
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Email: info@searcs-web.com Searc's Web Guide to 20th Century Ireland - Seamus Keenan (born 1947) |
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Seamus Keenan, nephew of
Terry Ward, was born in Derry.
He was educated at Saint Columb's College, Derry and Trinity College, Dublin from where he
graduated in 1970. Keenan was arrested for IRA activities in July, 1973 and remanded in Crumlin Road Gaol
until his trial in March, 1974 when he was sentenced to six years in Long Kesh. Keenan was
released in 1978. Keenan's poem An Irish Wake was
written in 1985 and is published here for the first time. Keenan is currently writing film scripts.©
October's quartered lands are quiet. Drained of all their colour. On tired grey fields. Altars of winter, Naked trees are waiting, sour Empty branches reaching to the light. And all around are ravaged vertebrates Stretching silently in cold air. What strange insects are interred In this unfamiliar brittle bark Crumbling to grey death dust In my hand. Strangers in the dining room Restless and afraid.... Their eyes canvasses of black and grey... Timely intimacies of the lying Irish Repulse his face, grey With uncomprehended tears.. A cup of tea becomes a lifebelt Every glance a wonder.. Pale fingers seek Like repose as the dead. Uncomfortable blackness Encloses a black crucifix. Ruined buildings Legacies of past eviction, Graves of images Screwed from the earth, Are catalogued, dismissed, But the scavenging moss Alternately reveals and smothers Heaps of hard bricks, So the sun can flash Triumphantly, in cellophane dance Across a scuffed, white-washed wall And damaged, creaking corrugated huts. © Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008 |
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