Poem

Eugene O\'Connell

Side by side

Gombeen

Be honest, would you trust a man
Who’d sell his youthful years for gain,
Because you like the smell of fat
Why skin your donkey just for that.

Who weds an auld wan just for dough
Makes one grand splurge then oh no,
Because you like the smell of fat
Why skin your donkey just for that.

No out clause in his pre-nup contract
‘Your man’ is beggared if he default,
Because you like the smell of fat
Why skin your donkey just for that.

Nothing in his life but woe, Bog Latin,
With his ‘God incrase ye sir’ and ‘gratis’.

Gombeen: approximately, Gaelic for vulgarly venal person The epigraph is an adaptation by the poet of quotes from Sebastian Brant\'s Narrenschiff.

$Eugene O\'Connell$

Eugene O\'Connell

(Ireland, 1951)

Eugene O’Connell was born near Kiskeam in northwest Cork in 1951. He has published a number of chapbooks, one full collection of poems, One Clear Call (Bradshaw Books, 2003), and one book of translations, Flying Blind (Southword Editions), which was volume 12 of the Cork European City of Culture Translation Series. Diviner, a new collection of his poems, was published by Three Spires Press in 2...