Ireland Sings To Her Emigrants:
I am lovesick.
My fields are empty with sorrow
and my wealth dissipates with depression.
No laughing children fill my woods.
They are all gone out into the world.
But I am a woman in love!
And her lovers have turned away.
Return from the far off lands
to me, your ain true love.
Hag no more, I am young,
my breasts as firm as mountain hills
my valley as wet as the Boyne
my hair is soft and long and sweet
and my lips are red with lust.
I am a woman crying out to be loved:
Love me! Love me! Oh love me!
It is the hooded owl's night-call,
refusing to be ignored in the dark.
Come back to your childhood home
where we played outside time or care.
I was a bird and you my song,
laughter raised to the seven heavens.
Re-enter my pleasant lands:
they are fragrant with meadowsweet and gorse,
elderflower, hawthorn and wild rose.
I have prepared a bed for our lovemaking.
It is strewn with petals and grasses and silk,
out on the hills amidst the heather.
There I will reveal to you the secrets of power
best learned from a woman's hot thighs.
Forget the old stories and traditions!
They are not who I am today.
You were in love with a different woman.
Lie with me instead,
my soul spread naked before you.
In that embrace, we will make a new mythology of love.
Kiss me hard on the mouth,
and from our pillow I will whisper a new tradition for life.
Dwell with me
See me as I am
not your mother or grandmother
not Maeve or Grainne or Deirdre,
although I have been all of those and more
but see me without projection:
a small fair woman,
island unto herself
but sister to the world,
fierce and independent
yet vulnerable, lovelorn, battle-weary.
I have claimed my power anew,
sexuality, sovereignty, my soul,
seeking out new priests for the religion of love
and new politicians for the freedom of life.
Now penetrate my depths!
Let us make sighs of fulfillment together,
let everything burn away in passion's fire,
let nothing remain but you and I
and the love between a land and her people.
My fields are empty with sorrow
and my wealth dissipates with depression.
No laughing children fill my woods.
They are all gone out into the world.
But I am a woman in love!
And her lovers have turned away.
Return from the far off lands
to me, your ain true love.
Hag no more, I am young,
my breasts as firm as mountain hills
my valley as wet as the Boyne
my hair is soft and long and sweet
and my lips are red with lust.
I am a woman crying out to be loved:
Love me! Love me! Oh love me!
It is the hooded owl's night-call,
refusing to be ignored in the dark.
Come back to your childhood home
where we played outside time or care.
I was a bird and you my song,
laughter raised to the seven heavens.
Re-enter my pleasant lands:
they are fragrant with meadowsweet and gorse,
elderflower, hawthorn and wild rose.
I have prepared a bed for our lovemaking.
It is strewn with petals and grasses and silk,
out on the hills amidst the heather.
There I will reveal to you the secrets of power
best learned from a woman's hot thighs.
Forget the old stories and traditions!
They are not who I am today.
You were in love with a different woman.
Lie with me instead,
my soul spread naked before you.
In that embrace, we will make a new mythology of love.
Kiss me hard on the mouth,
and from our pillow I will whisper a new tradition for life.
Dwell with me
See me as I am
not your mother or grandmother
not Maeve or Grainne or Deirdre,
although I have been all of those and more
but see me without projection:
a small fair woman,
island unto herself
but sister to the world,
fierce and independent
yet vulnerable, lovelorn, battle-weary.
I have claimed my power anew,
sexuality, sovereignty, my soul,
seeking out new priests for the religion of love
and new politicians for the freedom of life.
Now penetrate my depths!
Let us make sighs of fulfillment together,
let everything burn away in passion's fire,
let nothing remain but you and I
and the love between a land and her people.
