BSW1 Condy in the Bluestacks
Episode 6, Oct 21, 2021, 02:06 PM
From The Bluestack Way Audio Guide, Part One: https://www.racontour.com/Bluestack/
Speaker: Francis Harvey
From the Bluestack Way - Part 1 playlist.
Francis Harvey (1925-2014) was originally from Enniskillen, but lived near Donegal Town for years. As he said himself ‘I owe an awful lot to the county of Donegal. In fact, I think I might never have become a poet if it wasn’t for the landscape of Donegal.’
Among Francis Harvey’s great poems is the one about Condy the sheepman, almost a mythic figure but rooted in the landscape of the Blue Stack Mountains. Written over forty years ago, the Donegal Democrat believes that 'it encapsulates the struggle between ‘progress’ and stasis, between an old man’s dignity and the encroachment of modernity'.
We were delighted to have the poet recite Condy for us in the audio piece and have to thank him and his daughter Esther for making it happen.
Condy
He lives alone in the shadow of mountains;
his tilted stony acres fray the clouds;
he takes eight years out of a dog and knows
his ewes better than the sons he never had.
The horizon is his fence, his sheep range free,
and yet his mind is penned, his spirit tethered.
He climbs through darkness into the light on the summit
but hears no voice from a cloud.
He fears death – the rickle of bleached bones in lonely places
and in drink weeps for himself and his brothers and for the others
on whom the shadow of mountains fell.
From the Bluestack Way - Part 1 playlist.
Francis Harvey (1925-2014) was originally from Enniskillen, but lived near Donegal Town for years. As he said himself ‘I owe an awful lot to the county of Donegal. In fact, I think I might never have become a poet if it wasn’t for the landscape of Donegal.’
Among Francis Harvey’s great poems is the one about Condy the sheepman, almost a mythic figure but rooted in the landscape of the Blue Stack Mountains. Written over forty years ago, the Donegal Democrat believes that 'it encapsulates the struggle between ‘progress’ and stasis, between an old man’s dignity and the encroachment of modernity'.
We were delighted to have the poet recite Condy for us in the audio piece and have to thank him and his daughter Esther for making it happen.
Condy
He lives alone in the shadow of mountains;
his tilted stony acres fray the clouds;
he takes eight years out of a dog and knows
his ewes better than the sons he never had.
The horizon is his fence, his sheep range free,
and yet his mind is penned, his spirit tethered.
He climbs through darkness into the light on the summit
but hears no voice from a cloud.
He fears death – the rickle of bleached bones in lonely places
and in drink weeps for himself and his brothers and for the others
on whom the shadow of mountains fell.