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20th Century Ireland - Michael P. O'Connor (1896-1967)
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Email: info@searcs-web.com 20th Century Ireland - Michael P. O'Connor (1896-1967) |
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Michael P. O'Connor was born in Loughrea, County Galway. In 1914 he joined the British
Army and served in France for the duration of the First World War. In 1918 O'Connor
enrolled at UCD from where he graduated in Medicine in 1925. He worked as a doctor in Malaya from 1927 and in 1941 he was interned by the Japanese at Sarawak Camp in Borneo. O'Connor was freed in 1945 afterwhich he returned to Ireland where he published two novels based on his wartime experiences: Dreamer Awake (1946) and Vile Repose (1950). This untitled poem was composed in April, 1944 while O'Connor was interned at Sarawak Internment Camp in Borneo.© I know not what its message may have been To us here pent within the panoply Of war; here, where all other sounds are but Cacophony; but me it carried back To spring in Rowheen Wood... There is a glade in Rowheen Wood where erst I sat in spring's high noon and heard, afar, The caw of rooks greeting an idle boat That glided past the wooded point below, Where the lake's wavelets kissed the whispering reeds, While, close beneath my eyes, from twig to grass There stretched a silken thread of spider's skein Rich with a wealth of glittering dewdrop gems; In truth a trinket fit to grace the neck Of any fairy queen; but as I looked, A thrush alighted on the branch above And from the necklace shook some simmering pearls, Leaving it shabby, sad, bereft... Dear God Limit these prisoned years; restore, replace These jewels shaken, dropt and lost from out The precious circlet of our lives; and bid Me wake again, night past, glad day ahead, To spring in Rowheen Wood. © Searc's Web Guide 1997-2007 |
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