Friday, March 6, 2009

Is it plagiarism if you absorb something to the point at which you experience it as a creative reality?


"...when the day was spent as far as you could see
and so fell silent into the sky..."

(The Sky over Co. Tyrone, Oct. 08)

Sometimes the language of something I am reading or have read, gets stuck in my minds throat and passes through me only to reappear different but the same.

Does that make sense? I really don't know how my creative filter actually works, (I suppose thats the beauty of it...) but I continue to feed it just the same. (And I do know what to feed it believe me!)

Seeing what comes out of my mix-master mind startles and perplexes me at times...

Much of the following poem is in the language of Moya Llewelyn Davies and George Thomson's English/Irish translation of Maurice O'Sullivan's "Twenty Years A-Growing."

But its not I think plagiarism, if it doesn't tell the same story, even though the language and some of the phrasing are similar.

I was in that place.

Transported.

And so, as I was experiencing it these lines appeared upon the page:



On not noticing the time passing:


Reach the top of the road

walk until you reach the hill head

see the house on such a night

see your sorrow


what used you to have

speak the tears falling

as if to put from yourself

a catch on your heart on the way to truth


draw a long sigh

how would you stand such hardship now

see the stars sparkling on something

and what used you to be doing in the run of the day


envied

when you came home with the spoils

who would not stand that hardship

isn't it a great wonder to remember it being made


you had the pick of the strand

the hunt of the hill

and the fish of the sea

I suppose you don't remember


you went among them

to hear the old people full of chatter:

Wasn't it a wild place?

It was musha! ...upon my word!


you, not a stitch of cloths on

as you were born and came ashore

when the day was spent as far as you could see

and so fell silent into the sky


as people scattered

homeward

to their white gables

and sleep.


obeedúid~

06/mar/09


1 comment:

  1. It was T.S. Eliot who remarked that all good poets are thieves - we steal the authentic. Art

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