In the Phoenix Park (rev)

[dedalus]

I sing inside my raptor soul

wrapped within rapture in its febrile fissures

now agaze and agape in the gloaming

with the stars very far above

and think I am in love.

 

Ah, Freddy Freddy (my name is John)

they are glorious items to look upon

while the world spreads out before your feet,

tesselated, tangy, detailed, neat:

there can be no finer better thing.

[Benjamin]

I enjoyed the poem, though your title conjured a smile at my memory of Ronnie Drew rasping Zoological Gardens and thoughts that the Phoenix Park had a certain notoriety.

[dedalus]

You're right about that, but the park is so big almost anything could go on in it! Something like 300,000 people came out to see Pope John Paul II in 1978 and they only filled one corner of the place. The poem is one of those that don't really have a title because no headline summary seems to fit the 'article' taken in its Irish sense as a unitary thing, as in "That fellow over there is a very queer article!" That got me thinking on the play of words between phoenix, the firebird, and the Irish fionn uisce* - pure or clear water - from which the name of the park is originally derived.

 

Ahh, Ronnie Drew! We'll hardly see the likes of him again, nor the city that gave rise to him: the Voice of 'the rare oul town'.

 

* pronounced feean ishka or feenisha, if you slur it.