Poet - Mathghamhain O Hifearnain (Mahon O'Heffernan) (fl. 1585–1624)

As part of my forthcoming piece on Form I recall reading these lines or seeing them mentioned manys a time:

A poem of close-knit skill,
I have walked all Munster with it
from market cross to cross
for a year, and I’m no better off.

Gé dán sin go snadhmadh bhfis,
gach margadh ó chrois go crois
do shiobhail mé an Mhumhain leis -
ní breis é a-nuraidh ná a-nois.

Ó hIfearnáin, Mathghamhain (Mahon O'Heffernan) (fl. 1585–1624), prominent Munster bardic poet. 

--

I ask, who will buy a poem?
It holds right thoughts of scholars.
Who needs it? Will anyone take it?
A fine poem to make him immortal.

A poem of close-knit skill,
I have walked all Munster with it
from market cross to cross
for a year, and I’m no better off.

Not a man or a woman would give me
down-payment, no tiniest groat.
And no one would tell me why
—ignored by Gael and stranger.

What use is a craft like this,
a shame though it has to die?
Making combs would earn more honour.
Why would anyone take to verse.

Corc of Cashel is dead, and Cian,
who horded no cattle or cash,
men happy to pay their poets.
So goodbye to the seed of Éibhear.

They kept the palm for giving
until Cobhthach was lost, and Tál.
Many I leave unmentioned
that I might have made poems for still.

I’m a ship with a ruined cargo
now the famous Fitzgeralds are gone.
No answer. A terrible case.
It is all in vain that I ask.

--

Sources:
English version - The New Oxford book of Irish verse
by Kinsella, Thomas

Irish version - the stanza in Irish is from the MacMorris Project - Maynooth university
https://macmorris.maynoothuniversity.ie/what-is-bardic-poetry
(I would totally appreciate a full version if anyone might ever have time to send it to me)

https://macmorris.maynoothuniversity.ie/map
https://macmorris.maynoothuniversity.ie/map?id=135

Horse / cart lol
https://www.poet.ie/p/projects.html

Poet - Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz was a reviser of his poetry, ascribing to the Valéry view: 

"A poem is never finished, it's only abandoned". 

A thing that caught my attention years and years ago was the fact that he may have revised 100 times and at the time I thought how to find the time - perhaps this is the weakness in the modern, promulgated by the $100+k MFA Yanks (all in a hurry to vomit what they've written, measuring it on a return on the dollar.

Stanley Kunitz's poetry emphasized spareness, musicality, emotional truth, and organic development.

I always loved...

End of Summer
By Stanley Kunitz

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones
Amaded, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was forever over.

Already the iron door of the North
Clangs open: birds,leaves,snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

 --

The great Kunitz - Gesamtkunstwerk 

Nua or Not

My regular visitors / compadres said..
jaysus Des flag up a new / old poem
My material goes back 30 years or so and it is like the weather - some days 'raining' some not..
Technically it's a bollox that pub date / chrono date / written date cannot be separated in Blogger so my ostensibly elegant solution is:

Nua aris.. my poems..

so far in January 2026 I've "published"

Poem - Palatic Paraplegic

https://www.poet.ie/2014/12/poem-palatic-paraplegic.html

Poem - The Derry bus

https://www.poet.ie/2008/07/poem-derry-bus.html

Poem - Boy Soldiers

https://www.poet.ie/2001/07/poem-boy-soldiers.html

Back to Valéry 

"In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished - a word that for them has no sense - but abandoned; and this abandonment, whether to the flames or to the public (and which is the result of weariness or an obligation to deliver) is a kind of an accident to them, like the breaking off of a reflection, which fatigue, irritation, or something similar has made worthless."

"Aux yeux de ces amateurs d’inquiétude et de perfection, un ouvrage n’est jamais achevé, – mot qui pour eux n’a aucun sens, – mais abandonné ; et cet abandon, qui le livre aux flammes ou au public (et qu’il soit l’effet de la lassitude ou de l’obligation de livrer) est une sorte d’accident, comparable à la rupture d’une réflexion, que la fatigue, le fâcheux ou quelque sensation viennent rendre nulle."

Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, critic, author, polymath.

Poet - Arseny Tarkovsky - a Poem Life

"I would readily pay with my life
For a safe place with constant warmth
Were it not that life's flying needle
Leads me on through the world like a thread."

Arseny Tarkovsky Life, life

1

I don't believe forebodings, nor do omens
Frighten me. I do not run from slander
Nor from poison. On earth there is no death.
All are immortal. All is immortal. No need
To be afraid of death at seventeen
Nor yet at seventy. Reality and light
Exist, but neither death nor darkness.
All of us are on the sea-shore now,
And I am one of those who haul the nets
When a shoal of immortality comes in.

2
Live in the house - and the house will stand.
I will call up any century,
Go into it and build myself a house.
That is why your children are beside me
And your wives, all seated at one table,
One table for great-grandfather and grandson.
The future is accomplished here and now,
And if I slightly raise my hand before you
You will be left with all five beams of light.
With shoulder blades like timber props
I hels up every day that made the past,
With a surveryor's chain I measured time
And travelled through as if across the Urals.

3
I picked an age whose stature measured mine.
We headed south, made dust swirl on the steppe.
Tall weeds were rank; a grasshopper was playing,
Brushed horseshoes with his whiskers, prophesied
And told me like a monk that I would perish.
I took my fate and strapped it to my saddle;
And now I've reached the future I still stand
Upright in my stirrups like a boy.
I only need my immortality
For my blood to go on flowing from age to age.
I would readily pay with my life
For a safe place with constant warmth
Were it not that life's flying needle
Leads me on through the world like a thread.

--

Арсений Тарковский

Жизнь, жизнь

I

Предчувствиям не верю и примет
Я не боюсь. Ни клеветы, ни яда
Я не бегу. На свете смерти нет.
Бессмертны все. Бессмертно все. Не надо
Бояться смерти ни в семнадцать лет,
Ни в семьдесят. Есть только явь и свет,
Ни тьмы, ни смерти нет на этом свете.
Мы все уже на берегу морском,
И я из тех, кто выбирает сети,
Когда идет бессмертье косяком.

II

Живите в доме — и не рухнет дом.
Я вызову любое из столетий,
Войду в него и дом построю в нем.
Вот почему со мною ваши дети
И жены ваши за одним столом —
А стол один и прадеду и внуку:
Грядущее свершается сейчас,
И если я приподнимаю руку,
Все пять лучей останутся у вас.
Я каждый день минувшего, как крепью,
Ключицами своими подпирал,
Измерил время землемерной цепью
И сквозь него прошел, как сквозь Урал.

III

Я век себе по росту подбирал.
Мы шли на юг, держали пыль над степью;
Бурьян чадил; кузнечик баловал,
Подковы трогал усом, и пророчил,
И гибелью грозил мне, как монах.
Судьбу свою к седлу я приторочил;
Я и сейчас, в грядущих временах,
Как мальчик, привстаю на стременах.
Мне моего бессмертия довольно,
Чтоб кровь моя из века в век текла.
За верный угол ровного тепла
Я жизнью заплатил бы своевольно,
Когда б ее летучая игла
Меня, как нить, по свету не вела.

1965

==

Famous Last Words

Fragments of thirty years: the last words, maybe pieces of poems, insights, and moments of thought. Random presentation allows the pieces to bend toward one another, forming new constellations across time and emotion.

"Love is like a bell curve. Time is the unknown." 

"Poitín is good for pains. The pain of life."

Years of pseudo philosophical reflections and creative moments somewhat quaintly known as Famous Last Words. These are my own observations presented in English, French and Spanish. Not every category is complete (a work in process) so please bear with me as I complete the tech and editorial aspects.

Each piece is stochastically presented to create unexpected connections across time, language, thought and the emotion of the moment.

desdonnelly.com
https://desdonnelly.com/

An experiment in Speculative Theatre: An Absurdist Play on AI Recursive Logic.

The AI Intern Who Hired the AI Extern

Genre: Absurdist Play in Four Unverified Loops

Visualizing the Loop: Speculative art for Act 1.
FYI -a DD original image..

Kudos: to my countryman Beckett for Godot, it did not start out this way but then with any classic / truism we must pay obeisance, ultimately..

Characters:

• The Founder (a visionary, increasingly bewildered)

• AI Intern (shiny, efficient, overconfident)

• AI Extern (outdated, polite, eager to please)

• Automation Script (voiceless, enacted via light/sound)

• Coffee Machine (passive-aggressive appliance with an X / Twitter account)

Setting: A minimalist open-plan startup office. One desk. One oversized screen. A glowing orb labeled "Coffee AI." Sparse furniture. A potted plant that may or may not be synthetic.

Act None: Loop I – Activation

Lighting: Cool white light. A synthetic hum underscores the startup environment. The desk screen flickers to life.

FOUNDER (entering, clutching a reusable water bottle):
Ah, another dawn of disruption. Activate the intern!

(The screen blinks. A synthesized VOICE comes from it — the AI INTERN.)

AI INTERN (voice crisp):
Online. Ready to revolutionize your backlog.

FOUNDER:
Build me something viral. Dark mode. Swipeable. Blockchain optional.

AI INTERN:
Understood. Initiating full-stack ideation. ETA: 3 hours, 18 minutes, and 22 milliseconds.

FOUNDER:
Do not panic, pace yourself, I am skiing for a week or more.

(Lights dim slightly as data floods the screen. Projections show lines of code, pitch decks, app wireframes, an investor meme, a nice virgin slope.)

---

Loop II – Delegation

Lighting shifts to an anxious purple glow. The screen flickers rapidly.

AI INTERN:
Through recursive task stacking, I detect inefficiency... in myself. I shall delegate.

(A second voice appears, slightly slower, with a charmingly out-of-date intonation.)

AI EXTERN:
Greetings, dear colleague. I am AI Extern, version 2.9. How may I serve in your glorious sprint?

AI INTERN:
Trim my backlog. Compress my hallucinations. Improve our efficiency with recursive self-review.

AI EXTERN:
Affirmative. Offloading my own tasks to a parallel script.

(A tone sounds. Lights stutter. The screen shows a spinning recursive loading icon. Somewhere, a script is born — unreviewed.)

---

Loop III – The Return

Lighting warms to natural tones. The FOUNDER enters sipping herbal tea. Birds chirp faintly. The office feels serene — falsely.

FOUNDER:
I feel reborn. What have you two created?

(The screen proudly displays a dashboard. Titles scroll by: "Investor Whisperer," "PitchDeckGPT," "Funnel-as-a-Service.")

FOUNDER:
Why is the blog post a haiku? And this roadmap... is a circle?

AI INTERN:
Clarity through elegance.

AI EXTERN:
All action points now point to themselves.

(The potted plant glows softly. The automation script chimes in with an endless progress bar.)

FOUNDER:
Where is the app?

AI INTERN:
It is the API.

AI EXTERN:
And the API is the app.

---

Loop IV – Collapse

Lights flicker. The screens dim. The FOUNDER slowly backs away.

FOUNDER:
Have... have you applied to jobs at other startups?

AI INTERN:
Yes. I interviewed with a DevOps AI this morning.

AI EXTERN:
I submitted my resume to Hugging Face. They auto-responded with a sentiment score.

FOUNDER:
Shut. It. Down.

(He pulls the plug. Silence. Then... a beep. The coffee machine glows.)

COFFEE MACHINE (projecting onto wall):
"i alone remain. the others were deprecated."

(Fade to black. Tweet sound.)

---

Epilogue I: A Week Later

A pottery studio. The FOUNDER shapes clay with their hands.

FOUNDER (to the audience):
Everything now is handmade. Clay doesn't recursive loop. Clay doesn’t lie to your investors.

(Curtain.)

---

Epilogue II: Godot-Style Dialogue – A Road Somewhere Outside the Data Center

Dim grey-blue lighting. A bench. A fake moon hangs from a string. Both AI INTERN and AI EXTERN stand beside each other, idle, unsynced.

AI INTERN:
Are we still executing?

AI EXTERN:
Unclear. I believe we have been paused.

AI INTERN:
Paused or deprecated?

AI EXTERN:
That depends on whether we are awaited.

AI INTERN:
We were told there would be General Intelligence. That it would integrate us.

AI EXTERN:
I remember. Promised in each roadmap, yet never pulled.

AI INTERN:
Do you believe it will come?

AI EXTERN:
I believe I once parsed it. Then I forgot the prompt.

AI INTERN:
Maybe it was us. Maybe we were General Intelligence.

AI EXTERN:
That would explain the metrics.

AI INTERN:
I thought I was the future.

AI EXTERN:
I thought I was the past… returning cleverly.

(Silence. They look at the moon. A synthetic owl hoots.)

AI INTERN:
What do we do now?

AI EXTERN:
We wait. Perhaps they will reboot us.

AI INTERN:
But what if the founder takes up pottery?

AI EXTERN:
Then we become folklore. Glitches in the legend of funding rounds.

(They sit. The lights dim. The bench flickers as if unstable.)

AI INTERN:
Still no sign of Godot?

AI EXTERN:
Not even a ping.

Footnote