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An elegy after Callimachus for Dame Clare Marx
A WhatsApp blurted out that you were dead,
Clare. And tears came. How often we looked ahead,
We friends! Our company outshone the sun,
Laying him down to rest. Now it’s begun,
This after-time. But our home, still your home,
Like the atomic structure of a poem
Binds energy in. Your stance, your healing work,
Your nightingales, disprove the complete dark.
Philip McDonagh is adjunct professor in the faculty of humanities at Dublin City University and director of the Centre for Religion, Human Values, and International Relations. As a diplomat, he was involved in the Northern Ireland peace process in the build-up to the Good Friday Agreement. His volumes of poetry include The Song the Oriole Sang (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2010).
A WhatsApp blurted out that you were dead,
Clare. And tears came. How often we looked ahead,
We friends! Our company outshone the sun,
Laying him down to rest. Now it’s begun,
This after-time. But our home, still your home,
Like the atomic structure of a poem
Binds energy in. Your stance, your healing work,
Your nightingales, disprove the complete dark.
Philip McDonagh is adjunct professor in the faculty of humanities at Dublin City University and director of the Centre for Religion, Human Values, and International Relations. As a diplomat, he was involved in the Northern Ireland peace process in the build-up to the Good Friday Agreement. His volumes of poetry include The Song the Oriole Sang (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2010).
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