54 March 2015
CULTURE POETRY
Why
are the
critics
not
weeping?
M
ICHAEL D Higgins, the
ninth president of Ireland,
has given us another poem.
The poem had already been
excer pted in the president ’s
annual Christmas card but citizens who
have criticised the president’s poetry are
not in general on this list and it was only
made available to the general public as
late as February. Village therefore now
belatedly brings readers the full text,
below.
The president, according to BBC News
Europe, which takes a global approach
to poetic presidents, claims that “the
demands of the presidential role have
slowed his literary output” and he is
“unlikely to release another [collection
of poetry] due to the demands on his
time as head of state”.
Higgins’ purveying himself as a poet
suggests the role of president does not
leave him complete, a sense elevated
where his poetic and literary credibil-
ity is demonstrably so far inferior to his
political sensibility.
In his foreword to ‘The Irish Presi-
dency’ (2014) he persuasively disputes
with one of its contributors, Michael
Gallagher, that “the president of Ire-
land cannot be identified as a significant
actor”.
What, then with his firm belief in the
president as actor and his celebrated
stint as Minister f0r Arts and Culture
(1993-1997), it is not surprising that
culture would be well-served during
his incumbency. However, there is no
excuse for bad art, less still bad presi-
dential art. We all remember in sorrow
how Carol Rumens, a fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature, writing in the
Guardian in 2011, described ‘When
will my time come?’ as “mad-dog-shite”
and accused him of not knowing when a
poem is made. “It’s almost sacrilegious
to mention him alongside Irish poets
who actually do make decent poems”,
she states.
Sacrilegious too to mention him in the
same artistic breath as Douglas Hyde our
first, and only, literary president. His
‘Literary History of Ireland’ is a classic.
As folklorist and translator from Gaelic
poetry, he produced abiding works such
as ‘Love Songs of Connacht’. W.B. Yeats
praised him as a poet “that noble blade
the Muses buckled on”.
Meanwhile, the BBC, which is much
less frivolous about these matters, had an
edifying note of hope for all of us about
the president’s writing: Higgins intends
“to publish a volume of his speeches”.
This inspired Sam Griffin, who was po-
faced about the whole debacle writing in
the loyalist Irish Independent, to lam-
entation that Higgins “was putting his
career as a poet and writer on hold”.
Going on, Griffin not implausibly
“believed [it] to be a commentary on
the social and political upheaval in the
Middle East, including Syria and Iraq”.
President MUST be a poet,
insists President Higgins.
By Kevin Kiely
March 2015 55
prophets or for example if the prophets
include the Christian prophet. Poetry
doesn’t necessarily have an ultimate
meaning but Higgins’ method renders
meaning superfluous. For instance, in the
opening stanza he sees that the prophets
are weeping because of the abuse of their
“words” scattered “to sow an evil seed”.
The phraseology is shallow. The use of
“words” while the use of “evil seed”, an
image certainly though not a good one,
is not qualified, developed or given any
context.
The poem clunkily tells us both that
“it is reported…”, and that “Rumour has
it”. This reviewer has it that no poet
could ever use this phrase. So what are
the prophets weeping at with “their
texts distorted,/The death and destruc-
tion,/Imposed in their name”? We never
find out. The lines go on to make obvi-
ous statements about refugees, parents
and children. “Mothers and Fathers hide
their faces” in line 15. There is no men-
tion of the Middle East.
What are the texts that he refers to?
Mohamed wrote the ‘Quran’ that was
revealed and inspired by Allah. Higgins
uses the word “texts” (plural), whereas
the ‘Quran’ admittedly has many verses
but is one text. And those who kill in the
Prophet’s name presumably kill for the
‘Quran’. Whether the ‘texts’ referred
to in Higgins’s lines are other than the
‘Quran’ is never revealed. However, there
is certainly no reference in the poem to
the ‘Quran’ or any other sacred text, or
even texts.
The conclusion blandly repeats the
line about ‘The Prophets weeping’ for
the third time. Apparently their words
“have been stolen”. These words “...once
offered/A shared space/Of love and care/
Above all for the stranger”. In this we see
good humanity and politics certainly but
poor poetry.
The President consistently insists he
must poeticise, as in his most recent
Arts Council funded “New and Selected
Poems” from Liberties Press in 2011.
‘The Prophets are Weeping’ as his latest
effusion is an appalling piece of confused
mystification which sustain his now long
proven low literary standards.
It would be better for the president
to honour his office by making explicit
statements about the Middle East.
Now that he is having to relegate his
poetical labours because of the con-
straints of public life perhaps he can give
full time to his speeches, which are often
excellent. •
However geographical precision is com-
promised since the BBC stated that it was
completed in November after “his three-
week visit to Ethiopia, Malawi and South
Africa”.Ronan McGreevy in the Irish
Times even more bravely located it s poi nt
of reference as “northern Iraq and those
in flight from the Syrian conflict”.
In point of fact the poem has no known
location, suggesting perhaps that it is for
everywhere, and for all time.
The relevance of the poem to Iraq and
Syria is more poetically allusive than it
need be simply because there is no ref-
erence to either country.
The immediate conundrum is catego-
rising it as a ‘poem’ at all. The typography
gives ‘The Prophets’ the shape of a poem,
and of course the president says it is one,
but on reading the lines, anyone who
acknowledges it for poetry can only
be being polite. There is no original
imagery (though certainly “seeds” are
“sown”), no poetic complexity, no art.
The work’s form of 27 lines comprising
five short irregular stanzas that include
repetitions suggests that it was knocked
off in a few minutes.
The whole exercise primarily serves
as a media gratuity to Higgins premised
on the notion that if he writes poetry it
must, since he is president and indeed
clearly a man of intelligence in affairs
of state, be a significant event. Ronan
McGreevy declared portentously in the
Irish Times that President “Michael D
Higgins has released the text of the only
poem he has written since assuming
office in 2011”.
He notes that “The Prophets are Weep-
ing with its references to extremism and
the displacement of people could hardly
be more topical given the situation in the
Middle East”.
The lines, McGreevy emphasises, were
completed before the massacre in the
offices of Charlie Hebdo. We are invited
to infer that Michael D’s insights were
prescient.
‘The Prophets’ is in fact utterly vague.
It is not clear who the prophets are meant
to represent. Why they are weeping is
not stated with enough poetry or prose
to engage. It is not at all clear whether
the president welcomes an intervention
by the prophets, whether he respects
Griffin in
the
Irish
Independent
lamented
the fact that
Higgins “was
putting his
career as
a poet and
writer on hold”
“
To those on the road it
is reported that
The Prophets are weeping,
At the abuse
Of their words,
Scattered to sow an evil seed.
Rumour has it that,
The prophets are weeping.
At their texts distorted,
The death and destruction,
Imposed in their name.
The sun burns down,
On the children who are crying,
On the long journeys repeated,
Their questions not answered.
Mothers and Fathers
hide their faces,
Unable to explain,
Why they must endlessly,
No end in sight,
Move for shelter,
for food, for safety, for hope.
The Prophets are weeping,
For the words that
have been stolen,
From texts that once offered,
To reveal in ancient times,
A shared space,
Of love and care,
Above all for the stranger.
President Michael D Higgins
THE PROPHETS ARE WEEPING

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