Sorry for leaving it so long since the last blog, but it’s been a hectic summer.  Enough of the excuses.  To make up for the long wait, we have a real treat for you.  Last Friday we said goodbye to the wonderful Slovene teachers, but they’ve left us (to almost steal the title of Saul Bellow’s beautiful short story) something to remember them by.

After reading and discussing Patrick Kavanagh’s “Canal Bank Walk” in class, we headed down to Baggot Street to photograph images from the poem.  So, here’s what they came up with.  Enjoy:

Canal Bank Walk

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.

The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third

Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,

And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word

Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.

O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib

To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech

For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

So thanks to Mateja, Lea, Vesna, Vesna, Eva, Urska, Erika – whose speech is overflowing, Barbara, Romana – who doesn’t seem to be getting much of a response from Paddy there, Karmen and Irena.

(Hope to see you all again, either here, or over there.)

Now, over to you, blog readers.  If you have any photos that could accompany a few lines of poetry or prose, please send them in and I’ll post them over the next few weeks.

All the best and take it easy.