st_patrick's reviuquer Well wishes to all you lost souls in the world that is so sadly old and out of touch but you delude yourselves as being new and somehow special, different, fresh, better or some combination thereof. Today is too nice and too holy to suggest coldly you really should get a grip. Besides, here that idiom is not understood apart from the ancient and deeply real plough. So far this day I've been with no one but my lover in our new house by the sea in Ballyconneely. Since early this morn - as the sun broke the horizon by Dublin far east of here and it's now near supper time - we've been enjoying a whiskey or two between each other and writings in green paint on each other's pads and readings over the nearby crashing waves of Keats and Yeats and Joyce and Kavanaugh (Patrick, not that fake James) and our dear friend Seamus H. (first his translation of "Buile Suibhne" ("Sweeney Astray") and next the greatest, Beowulf, but we will save that until after we sup and before we turn on again after the candles be lit). We are warm. It is warm and gloriously sunny. The setting sun does magic for soul and heart and eye and voice and ear and hands and everything that fingers are and touch and does entreat us to come together with all we be till it breach again the morning mist. Our warmth, together and to share, and the day's are just as the Saint had intended for the date he set to be his birthday, the first day of Spring. Before the nearly 15 centuries of repression brought on by the church he cursed before and as he passed and as he still does. So to celebrate you, our sadly forlorn in the world of utter confusion you remain mired in over there, we walked out at our noon together, arms around each other's waists, naked but for the green paint we'd massaged all over each of us, to the shoreline a short distance from our door and drank a toast before singing to each other in your honor and ours our first reading today of Joyce: A Prayer Again! COME, GIVE, YIELD ALL YOUR STRENGTH TO ME! From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain Its cruel calm, submission's misery, Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined. Cease, silent love! My doom! Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will! I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread. Draw from me still My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head, Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying Him who is, him who was! Again! Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain. COME! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here. Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish, Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me! (Poem No. 13 of the thirteen in "Pomes Penyeach" (1937)) So to you all, Happy St. Patrick's Day. Enjoy it while you can. C 2000 Do not steal this from me. 000317 ... Silent Bob I'm irish and all the people on my mom's side are irish. but they don't show it til St. Patrick's day. "Well, i can get drunk again today, TOO because i'm irish." as if they wouldn't get drunk that day ANYWAY even if it wasn't st. patrick's day. and they weren't irish. i'm glad i don't drink. 000615 what's it to you? who go blather from