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Pray father give me your blessing

Oh we don’t do confessions anymore and the Catholic church.

I don’t care what other people do I want to confess my sins now.

Oh well if you insist carry on but you’re supposed to be in the confessional box so I won’t know who you are

Oh don’t worry about that.

Well what have you done wrong?

I used the wrong cutlery when I went to a meal in a hotel with some clients but that’s not a sin is it?

Well it could be a sin if you did it to try to humiliate somebody even to humiliate yourself.

But why would I want to humiliate myself?

Well you know people are very strange and many people are cruel to themselves

Well that is me something to think about. Making myself suffer all these years thinking it was a good thing and now I find it’s a sin.

Any other sins?

Well I need to look at a list really because I probably haven’t heard of some of them for example adultery.

Well you must have heard of it otherwise you wouldn’t have said it would you?

Very true but so many years I was puzzled about what it was I thought it was something that adults did which in one sense was true but I didn’t realize it was anything to do with sex.

Well what else could people vdo that was wicked?

They could hit somebody or swear at somebody or steal the housekeeping money from the wife’s purse

Why would you give your wife  housekeeping money and then steal it back?

Well you wanted her to think that you were generous so you will give her the money but then in the night you could steal it back and she wouldn’t know that it was you

So it’s a combination of deceit and lying and theft my goodness in this carries on I’ll have to take you to the police station

The police weren’t bothered about this sort of trivia not when we’ve got young children being murdered in a dancing class.

Yes I do see what you mean nevertheless the existence of greater evil does not give us licence to commit smaller evils

Now do you repent of these sins?

Yes I do I agree it’s very wrong because it made my wife very unhappy and although it wasn’t a adultery in the sexual sense nevertheless it was very bad to do that to an adult especially while I’m supposed to love.

Well do you love her?

Yes when I’m feeling alright I do but when I’m feeling bad because I’ve lost my job or I’ve been gambling and bu lost money there then it’s harder too love anyone even my own children because my feelings of guilt and horror are too strong for me to be able to focus on anybody else.

Well if you don’t feel that you can stop doing these things then we’ll have to find someone to help you. There are places where gamblers can get help for example.

But suppose I don’t want to go

In that case you’re making yourself more likely to do bad things and to harm your family and other people

Yes it all seems so easy just talking to you here but when it comes to the crunch it is hard

But you see this is how you show your love for your family and your friends by being brave enough to get help for your weaknesses which otherwise will harm them not to mention harming yourself but that’s for you to think about

Alright I will absolve you from your sins as long as you promise me that you will never do these things again.

Yes I am very thankful I spoke to you. I know definitely will get help if I find I’m getting tempted too much.

Very well my child.

I’m not really your child am I m after all you are a Catholic priest

No you’re not my child but I was married at one time and my wife died so I decided I would enter the religious life.

Do you think that was a good idea?

Yes I think so because I can help people who are in a sense like my children would have been in my wife hadn’t died and so I feel I’m using my paternal feelings and instincts to make society better. You can’t deny that God will be pleased if society gets better

I suppose that’s true but there’s so much badness.

Just start small that’s all you have to do. We might be weak but we can all do small things.

And so  say all of us

Mioaw

Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
Tinged with grey from lack of proper care,
While from the Channel sing the dread foghorns

Sailors in the night long for new dawn
Fear boats of refugees may still sail there
Snow clouds hang like canopies well torn

A dinghy holds the Saviour lately born
There is no space on earth safe from great fear
F rom the Channel sigh the families drowned

From maternal’ space, Jesu is torn
His father holds his arms around those dear
Snow clouds hang, are lacy wings no more

The hearts of British ” natives” have turned sour
Into Jesu’s side we thrust our spears
Tune the channel.Requiems need scores

All lives now, and all of time is here
Do not mistake the song of silent choirs.
Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
While in the Channel, reckless are the horns

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-longley

I

Known for using classical allusions to cast provocative light on contemporary concerns—including Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”—Longley’s poetry is also marked by sharp observation of the natural world, deft use of technique, and deeply felt emotion. His debut volume, No Continuing City (1969), heralded the arrival of a new voice from a region which had already produced recognized talents like Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. Longley’s early influences were English poets like Philip Larkin, Louis MacNeice, World War I poets, as well as masters from the classical tradition. The critic Langdon Hammer has described Longley’s poems as masterpieces of “lucidity, economy, sincerity … by means of meticulous, unpretentious technique.” When asked in a 1998 interview about the formal discipline that helps him produce four- and two-line poems, Longley replied, “Was it Tennyson who said that a perfect lyric inscribes the shape of an S? That sense of a gesture, you know, the way you use your hand if you’re bowing, if you’re reaching out to shake somebody’s hand, if you’re going to stroke a cat, if you’re holding a woman’s hand to take her on to the dance floor.”

Longley’s work engages diverse subjects, including Homeric literature, the landscape of Carrigskeewaun, jazz, Walter Mitty, and the politics of Northern Ireland. On the public and political responsibilities of being a Northern Irish poet, he has commented, “Though the poet’s first duty must be to his imagination, he has other obligations—and not just as a citizen. He would be inhuman if he did not respond to tragic events in his own community, and a poor artist if he did not seek to endorse that response imaginatively.” Reviewing his Selected Poems (1993), critic Fran Brearton praised in particular Longley’s more political poems, noting his “use of a compassionate yet unsentimental voice, and an attention to detail which restores specificity at a point in history when it is most in danger of being lost in abstraction—numbers, dates, death-tolls counted beyond comprehension.”

Longley is married to the critic Edna Longley. They live in Belfast, Ireland.

Poems by Michael Longley

• The Design
• The Quilt

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This wonderful poet from Northern Ireland has died aged 85

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-longley