Saint Patrick's Day Poem by Bernard Kennedy

Green- because we are a windswept
windswept isle, most days-
sodden sometimes summer saturated hills
and we shrill when sun is prolonged.
We Irish- mixed race and many invaders-
Celts-Spanish- Normans-Vikings.
Galatia-Iberia- Nordic-Scandavia.
And before Patrick Palladius goes awol.
He structured the believers-
though a slave in Slemish, trafficked-
traded after alone those days from priestly caste.
And then drawn back to this early event to change it.
Freud called it,
remember-repeat-working through,
as the memory of healing dynamic.
The torn cloth made garment.
The cloth of gold.
And he becomes Patron Saint of Ireland.
The shamrock, the trinity,
the dream is the thing
and the snakes vanished and vanquished.
Hail, Glorious.
Abducted and put to work, from Brittany?
From Wales?
The torn memories rethreaded in an isle
of torn memories
rethreading.