Back once again in wild, wet Monaghan <br />Exiled from thought and feeling, <br />A mean brutality reigns: <br />It is really a horrible position to be in <br />And I equate myself with Dante <br />And all who have lived outside civilization. <br />It isn't a question of place but of people; <br />Wordsworth and Coleridge lived apart from the common man, <br />Their friends called on them regularly. <br />Swift is in a somewhat different category <br />He was a genuine exile and his heavy heart <br />Weighed him down in Dublin. <br />Yet even he had compensations for in the Deanery <br />He received many interesting friends <br />And it was the eighteenth century. <br /> <br />I suppose that having to live <br />Among men whose rages <br />Are for small wet hills full of stones <br />When one man buys a patch and pays a high price for it <br />That is not the end of his paying. <br />"Go home and have another bastard" shout the children, <br />Cousin of the underbidder, to the young wife of the purchaser. <br />The first child was born after six months of marriage, <br />Desperate people, desperate animals. <br />What must happen the poor priest <br />Somewhat educated who has to believe that these people have souls <br />As bright as a poet's - though I don't, mind, speak for myself.<br /><br />Patrick Kavanagh<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/having-to-live-in-the-country/
