The Street

Poems and Ballads of John B. Keane

John B Keane

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781781175514
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

(Selected & Edited by Joanna Keane-O'Flynn) John B. Keane was a spirited, charismatic and generous man who will forever occupy a special niche in the hearts and minds of Irish people everywhere. This is a fascinating collection of many well-known John B Keane poems and, for the first time, his songs, selected and edited by his daughter Joanna. It includes; The Street, My Father, The Sive Song, Sweet Listowel, Many Young Men of Twenty, Kitty Curley and If I Were the Rose of Tralee - a must for all Keane fans.

Late Night Review

Now that many nights of similarity have passed

And day upon day of gradual surcease

And some maturity has sown its doubtful seed

I am somewhat of a man in principle at last,

Compelled to manhood by varied imperfections,

And mellowed with dreaming of a lost pale girl.

Time now to review the fretful summary

Of some kind and Apollyon encounters

Before a secondary phase inhabits my mind’s

Midway application for maybe there will be

No secondary phase at all.

I remember a bronze girl stilled to burning sculpture

At a seaside place in summer time

And she was much more evident than others

A full and proper long-legged shape

For whom surrender meant marriage at the very least.

A damsel born not for dire distress,

Her penultimate, a fortnightly lodge

At Ballybunion, Youghal or Kilkee.

For winter to show her respectability

A beaver short-coat, Canadian squirrel three-quarter

And of course one full-length reputable musquash

And all through spring, autumn, summer, winter

An income from sedate and settled husband

Who will not spend a long weekend in London;

A limited number of children, all paragons.

I might have, if it were worth the time,

Apprenticed her to my way of thinking,

Shown her the imperturbability of dead leaves

In wordless woods of late autumn

Or stilled her lips with kisses if she chattered

When larks rose carolling from deep heather.

Then there was another maid of several sorts,

A creature whose eyes were luminous with love

Of places and people but notably herself

Who could not hear my loving undertones

For chance of not being seen at gatherings mostly

theatrical.

Love’s great passionate function was lost

Within her tedious tirades;

She could not stand Algernon Fitzpelligory.

You will have guessed he was an actor,

And that bitch Gillian Goodbody who played principal

Last year in Puss and Boots at Brighton,

And Dottie Dollydill, spiteful little wretch

Always ogling Otty Pussboy the impresario.

You would hardly expect a man of developing principle

To endure an endlessness of this.

I smote unplaned and springing boards in Morna

To wild accordeon and fiddle music.

I seized a red-legged thumper of a mountain lass

And waltzed her into breathlessness.

She suspected my thin towny accent from the start.

I eluded her kinsmen and fled that strange cou...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Street
• The Wagtail
• An Ardent True-Lover
• The Trapped Ones
• Protracting an Affair of Love
• Letter to Jack McIntyre, Esquire
• Letter to Katherine Margaret McHugh
• Last Letter of Katherine Margaret McHugh
• Feale Waters
• Nothing Matters
• How Ignorant Men are Misled by Ignorance
• Certainty
• Late Night Review
• A Madman
• To Charles Lynch
• Words Taken from the Latter Chapters of a Booze
• To a Girl of Eighteen in a Cocktail Lounge which is Filled with Old Women
• Come Destiny
• Home
• Faces
• Leaving Home for the First Time
• Honour
• My Father
• The Tumbler of Men
• Ballad of Survival
• Women who Idolise Dogs
• A Young Father’s Advice to his Sons
• The Drinkers
• Other Men’s Sons
• Crinny Hill
• Two Lips
• Two Eyes
• Autumn’s End
• Delight
• Tryst
• Yesterday
• Dan Paddy Andy
• The Gallant Greenville Team
• The Brown Hills of Meen
• The Sive Song
• Sweet Listowel
• Bunagara by the Feale
• Invocation
• Sonnet
• The Alder Tree
• Many Young Men of Twenty
• As Simple as ABC
• The Boot Factory
• Won’t You Come Under my Shawl?
• Camden Town
• The Servant Girl
• Off to Tralee
• Let the Dance Go On
• Keelty
• If I Were the Rose of Tralee
• The Buck Navvy Song
• Kitty Curley
• The Liffey Side
• The Dawn is Breaking
• About the Author
• About the Publisher