It's been more than fifty years as i remember <br />And many Autumn leaves gone with the flooded rill <br />Since i first saw the face of a dead person <br />The silent remains of old 'Jack Will Bill'. <br /> <br />I recall that evening i walked through the fields of Lisnaboy upper <br />With my aunty Mary and my uncle Dan <br />To Jack Will Bill's son's farmhouse where the wake was <br />For to pay our last respects to the old man. <br /> <br />His friends and neighbours around his corpse assembled <br />All sad faced they gazed on the face of death <br />In Lisnaboy he farmed his fields and raised his children <br />And in Lisnaboy he drew his final breath. <br /> <br />Eyes closed in death he lay upon his death bed <br />A ghostly figure he looked pale and gray <br />His hands joined on his chest as if in prayer <br />And all signs of life from him had gone away. <br /> <br />Between his stiff bent fingers was a black rosary bead <br />And of all of life's cares and sufferings he was free <br />And between the spells of silence in the wake room <br />They said a decade of the rosary. <br /> <br />Dressed for his coffin in a dark brown habit <br />By Cullen church his final resting place <br />We sat around the waking room in silence <br />Gazing on his pale and lifeless wrinkled face. <br /> <br />A tearful old lady wearing a black shawl <br />Whispered to another 'he now is with the angels up above' <br />He was a saint a fly he would not harm <br />And his soul was full of kindness, warmth and love. <br /> <br />As we walked home through the moonlit fields in the early morning <br />The freshening winds blew with a rainy chill <br />And my aunty said 'the countless stars were shining' <br />For to light the way to God for Jack Will Bill.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wake-of-jack-will-bill/
