My Lagan Love/Crazy Man Michael(For Miss S) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

MY LAGAN LOVE

Snow falls
in the outside world

flake after flake
clinging for dear life

to the window pane

as it softly
erases our gazes

stuck
upon the glass

the fire
roaring behind us

with all the gusto
of past Christmases

two worlds
existing at once

separated only
by the mind

of the little boy
for whom

it was
always forever

the first time

as if the world
was being

created for him
just that second

as if God had said:

“Look…I have this
idea? ”

sketching it quickly
in white

asking: “Well, …
what do ya think? ”

And then impatiently
rubbing it out

and then
drawing it again
in snow & always

his father’s voice
singing somewhere

in the darkness

MY LAGAN LOVE.


******
C R A Z Y M A N M I C H A E L

Unknown woman
lost in the darkness

of an enormous
fireplace

black hair
framing a death

pale face
her dark dress

making her almost
invisible

a singing
floating head

hands
white doves

taking flight in gesture

almost mythical
your voice

tells the tale
of CRAZY MAN MICHAEL

each breath
almost magical

as your voice
shapes his fate

& he kills his own true love
by mistake.

“For his true love
is flown
into every flower grown
& he must be keeper of the garden, ”

Unknown woman
singing in the darkness

always your voice
the tears in my eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These are two beautiful songs that have stayed with me all through my life…I wouldn’t be without them.

MY LAGAN LOVE would have been first heard on the radio program SUNDAY MISCELENY again and again as an ancient air or sung by man or woman or transformed by Horslips into an electric guitar fantasia.

I loved all versions.

The favorite one being my Dad going out to get coal one childhood Chrsitmas singing a wordless version to himself…his voice hanging in the darkness as bright as any star.

A thing of beauty and my joy for ever.

CRAZY MAN MICHAEL seems like an eternally old ballad dragged back into the future but was actually written by Richard Thompson and sung by the incomparable Sandy Denny. I went to the Grapevine Arts Centre for a folk session and as I entered the door framed in this magnificent fireplace this vision sang this version from her darkness. It was as if LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI had come alive and could sing me to death with her song.

I was stunned and in love with the song ever since!