My old friend and best man or as they say in a more flattering form in France, garçon h’honneur, one Michael Healy, achieved a certain significant birthday while staying with us in France.
His official party took place in his sister Teresina’s house in Cork on Saturday (and very well she and other sister Olivia did us)
The Muse had, of course, to be dragged forth for the occasion.
This effort has several references which pertain to a shared childhood and long (50 year) adolescence.
Where possible I will provide footnotes.
How oft do my thoughts in their fancy take flight
To the home of my childhood and all
And to young Michael Healy shod in black and not white
Singing Bach down in Corks City Hall.
When my heart was as light as the wild winds that blow
Down the Mardyke through each elm tree.
Where we used to duck games and then later duck mass
On the banks of my own lovely Lee
And then in the springtime of laughter and song
Can I ever forget the sweet pearls
With the school friends of old as we walked up and down
Doing Pana*, trying to meet up with girls.
Then too when the evening sun’s sinking to rest
Sheds its golden light over the sea
We would head off to Keeleys† and get horribly pissed
On the banks of my own lovely Lee
Tis a beautiful land this dear island of song
Its gems shed their light in the dawn
And as Romeo he broadcast his Juliet# out
Which was heard from the Lough up to Graun
But mightier still was the words he sent forth
From the Gaeltacht out over the sea‡
For this was the Fíor Athair of TG a Ceathair
And the Máthair of Radio na G.
Oh what joys should be mine ere this life should decline
To sip sherry in Spains southern shore
To hear the Flamenco, and on Sardines to dine
And drink Cava as fast as t’will pour
And so I’ll return with the friend of my youth
For fifty years, a true friend to me
And we will drink Spanish wine , and remember our youth
By the banks, of our own lovely Lee.
* Refers to an ancient Cork mating dance in which scores of post pubertal schoolchildren walked up and down Patrick Street (Pana) in an attempt to impress the opposite sex and so get a shift*
† A Pub,frequented by students, now subsumed by the tautologous “The Le Chateau”.
# This refers to a pirate radio station which Michael ran from a biscuit tin on the back of a Honda 50.
‡ Refers to a rather more substantial Pirate station run, through the medium, (before, needless to mention, it was either popular or profitible ) from a caravan in Rosmuc.
*A Type of early Cork embrace, no longer practiced due to the intervention of the monastic orders.
The occasion of the first reading
captured by Olivia O Flynn
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