My admiration for the people of Lislea knows no bounds. I attended the mid-week Dr
In the meantime I thought I’d treat you to a poem by another of her famous sons, Hugh Murphy.
An Image
I remember them standing
On a Sunday morning
Shifting their feet
On the stone yard
Each the master
Of his own authority
Heads pinioned
In speech
Coats pulled tight
Around the waist,
Decked out in caricature
To honour the mystery
Once a week,
With the paper waiting
In the rusty van
To be bought and carried
Home
For their Sunday feast
Of idleness.
The headlines read
In awkward silence
In the first moment
Of uncertainty
When the intellectual burden
Was thrust in caroused hand;
And they stand, definite,
Tomorrow unquestioned
In their sense of purpose
A commonplace
As sure as market day
Or the threshing meet.
Each frozen in my memory
About to turn
Or take a step,
Quick-set in their certainty.
All gone
But for the fragile image.
Lislea graveyard
In its hasty greed
Has gulped their wandering feet.