Bringing In the Wasted Harvest
Ireland has been wasteful as a state of her resources, the most valuable of which is her young people, which she on their coming of age have fled to other nations to make their living, having non at home due to the economic crises caused by the collapse of the property and banking sectors.
Satire on “The Gathering”, a cynical exercise to bring back the Irish diaspora… not for the love of them, but for economic gain.
A direct rip off of Scotland’s “The Homecoming”, it has been taken to heart and made their own by communities right across Ireland.
If our government wanted to make it for the people, why do they not abolish the hated airline travel taxes for the duration?
Maybe VAT on accommodation and souvenir goods? If all that and more was done it would not ring as hollow as it does.
That is not to say we do not support the excellent efforts being put in by local committees across the country including here in Tullamore which are organising it locally for the right reasons.” Whatever the cash hungry reasons that the government came up with for the year long festival, the communities across the country are truly making it a Peoples Festival.
The remains of is surveyed
Withered, battered by wind and rain
Pathetically there displayed.
He called his neighbours for a threshing
As he walked its borders realized
Half his crop beyond his hedges had flown
From at sowing casting too wide.He stood there as if a master,
Pointed at his crop, a wasted yield…
And told his neighbours to harvest his grain,
That is growing in their field.
To harvest his crop in their field,
This they declined to do,
Though the seed was his, the crop was theirs…
Let him his wasteful scattering on sowing rue.
But he proceeded to plead in vain,
So a deal for him they planned,
He could harvest the plants that grew from his seed
As long as in their fields they did not stand.
The winters rains came in their time,
Cod and hard the wind it blew
As damp destroyed the crop the farmer harvested
As it rotted in his stores too.
A hungry winter to spring gave way,
His lesson was well learned,
But alas no seed had he now to plant
To apply the lesson hard earned.
Their would be no trashing that year
No, and none for many after,
As his neighbours got him to help them at theirs
Echoing in his ears their mocking laughter!