{"id":1081,"date":"2018-01-31T12:33:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T12:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/wordpress_marcus\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2024-08-19T15:35:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T15:35:32","slug":"poems-of-the-month-february-2018-irish-boyhood-winter-sparks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/?p=1081","title":{"rendered":"Poems of the Month, February 2018: Irish Boyhood &#038; Winter Sparks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>IRISH BOYHOOD<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>County Cork, 1948<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m the ghost of Josie Cronin,<br \/>\na girl of sweet fourteen<br \/>\n<span style=\"letter-spacing: 0.05em;\">She said &#8216;I want to see it.&#8217;<br \/>\n<\/span>I answered &#8216;Keep it clean.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Let me feel it&#8217;, she insisted,<br \/>\n&#8216;I won&#8217;t do you any harm.&#8217;<br \/>\nI thought &#8216;Perhaps I&#8217;m stupid,&#8217;<br \/>\nbut managed to stay calm.<\/p>\n<p>I can see a Welsh pit pony<br \/>\nin that distant childhood field.<br \/>\nIt had one ten times bigger,<br \/>\nbut still I would not yield.<\/p>\n<p>Another chance was wasted<br \/>\nthat could have changed my life.<br \/>\nImagine Josie Cronin<br \/>\nas a Flemish farmer&#8217;s wife!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>WINTER SPARKS<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Flying angels on the Burg<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Tonight the angels dance for me,<br \/>\na little Londoner of three<br \/>\nwhose Mamma left him all alone<br \/>\nand showed him how to use the phone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Ay! Ay! Ay! Pobre chico,<br \/>\ntu Paloma Blanca flew away.<br \/>\nCan you bear to stand and watch us,<br \/>\nhearts surrendered to the play?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Angels can do anything,<br \/>\nThey never make mistakes.<br \/>\nMine gardens, sews &amp; baths me<br \/>\nand bakes delicious cakes.<\/p>\n<p>The Hall in which we married<br \/>\nhas been illuminated.<br \/>\nHome James, the show is over<br \/>\nfor which all Brugge waited.<\/p>\n<p><em>BURG, 26 January 18.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IRISH BOYHOOD County Cork, 1948 I&#8217;m the ghost of Josie Cronin, a girl of sweet fourteen She said &#8216;I want [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}