There is something about this poem, that feels like a question about acceptance, “Will we take this, will we accept this next affront to our rights? Or will we rise up?” That feels fitting with the way the music has both a soft and a more metal half that very much feels like it could be the same challenge.
This feels like a poem with a few layers, at first, it could be about cutting peat, but as you discovered in your wider research, it isn’t a common practise that people harvest peat for personal use any more, and from what I gather it isn’t something that people have done so much for their own personal use a long time, and it really has a wider feel of a call to stand up to historic oppression. This is a very relevant poem, especially given the current situation Ireland is facing at the moment. The greater meaning here is something very close to my own heart - regardless of country. (Although my mum is Irish and very much raised me with rebel blood lol)
I very much enjoy this poem, there is a surprising lightness to it that feels conversational, the rhythm and structure, the weighting in each line. It gives it an almost colloquial feeling, (i read it with an accent) that makes the issue it covers accessible, and relatable. It makes it hard not to read it, and despite the wider environmental implications of the particular issue it covers, its hard not to understand the position of the speakers in the poem, which is a gift - the ability to put someone in another's shoes.
This is a very well put together poem, and the flow makes it memorable, and it all just helps the message of those who have forcing those who do not, to make life changes for “the greater good” without understanding what those life changes mean to those people. It being short just adds so much to that. I would actually love to see you share this even more, on the even wider web!
A poem as rousing as the music that inspired it!
Thank you, @calluna. I could hear my mother-in-law as I wrote. She had in her a sense of generation injustice that the Irish suffered. Her life on the farm was hard. So many children, and little resources. Every day, walking passed the Big House, I think it burned in her heart.
I see you also have had witness to this legacy in those you love. You read the poem, such as it is, so well.
Thank you for your commentary and for continuing to run forums here in which I feel the liberty to write and express myself creatively.