John Montague dies…

| Readers 518

At the sad news of the death of Brooklyn born Tyrone raised poet John Montague, one of his most famous poems:

The Rough Field

I saw the pope breaking stones on Friday

A blind parson sewing a patchwork quilt,

Two bishops cutting rushes with their croziers,

Roaring Meg firing rosary beads for cannonballs,

Corks in boats afloat on the summit of the Sperrins,

A severed head speaking with a grafted tongue,

A snail paring Royal Avenue with a hatchet,

British troops firing on the Shankill,

A mill and a forge on the back of a cuckoo,

The fox sitting conceitedly at a window chewing tobacco,

And a curlew in flight

surveying

a United Ireland.

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