The end of men
The biscuit has been taken. There goes the final straw sailing by. Think perhaps, now, I’ve seen it all. The situation is hopeless. O mankind I do despair. And I do particularly mean MANkind. What is it that has slid this lid evermore over the open coffin and sharpened the final nail? Allow me to share with you.
There was an item on TV the other day as part of RTE’s coverage of the Galway Races. An item on fashion. Now, we are all only too aware of how successfully the major ( and minor) annual race meetings in these islands such as Aintree, Cheltenham, Leopardstown or Punchestown have swelled their numbers in recent years by banging large drums and trumpeting massive sponsorships to make songs and dances out of Ladies Days, saturating us with handmade hats and high heels from paddock to post, parading for cash prizes or exquisite shopping spree vouchers for Kildare Village and perhaps there’s little harm in it.
Perhaps rather than thinking it sexist, maybe it’s an effort at inclusiveness? We’ll distribute the benefit of the doubt. Fillies, don’t they say, love the sun on their backs? But, and there is a massive BUT, I draw the line, we must collectively draw the line or all is lost.
The item during their coverage the other day dealt with a relatively new phenomena. A fledgling fashion advice company for Men. Fashion advice and guidance for men attending the races. Ahh would you stop!! Rescue me, or is the ship of sanity a losing docket?
I blame Ronaldo. Him of the self- obsession. Him the strutting look- at- my- torso peacock. Him what is more concerned with shamelessly glancing at how he looks on the stadium giant screen, rather than the tale on the scoreboard. Him that has a hairdresser in the locker- room at half time, allegedly. Is it not bad enough that our male youth have lost all individuality, and now look and smell like a clatter of preening flamingos on every corner, without a feather out of place? Fashion advice for men at the track, sigh.
When they start getting the nails ‘shellacked’ we’re finished. There won’t be a berry picked or potato pulled out of the ground ever again. Maybe I’m a bit harsh. Or maybe we have a duty to put the handbrake on such nonsense.
Two hundred and twenty years ago, this very month, on a hill outside Enniscorthy, the bodies of the dead from the battle on June 21st 1798 still remained unclaimed. For any relative or colleague to attempt to retrieve the dead loved one would have been a death sentence and foolhardy in the extreme, such was the vice- like grip that the Crown Forces had subjected the whole county of Wexford to.
It is recorded, that their rations of barley, carried in their pockets, took root and started to grow from the corpses. Symbolic is it not? God bless them, they died for us all.
Requiem for the Croppies
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown. Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave. Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon. The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave. John J Kelly is a multiple award-winning poet from Enniscorthy. He is the co-founder of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award with the Wexford Literary Festival and co-ordinator of poetry workshops for schools locally.
Each week, John’s column will deal mainly with novels, plays and poems from both the Leaving Certificate syllabus and Junior Certificate syllabus.