An Irish Love Story

It is awesome to discover other people's design. The above photograph is from an Irish blog called In Photos dot org. And right now I'm obsessing about a song and its design (by Spandau Ballet from 1986). It is a Romeo & Juliet-style love story set in a troubled Northern Ireland. A boy and a girl, one a Catholic and one a Protestant, betray their families and their upbringing to meet on the bomb sites and the no-man's land between divided communities. The setting is given away by the drum and pipe marching music, so reminiscent of the parades mentioned in the second chorus. Like Shakespeare's play, there is a tragic ending. The "hearts go to their graves," but it is not clear whether this refers metaphorically to the end of the affair or a suicide pact. Incidentally, the phrase "a terrible beauty we've made" is very like "a terrible beauty is born" from the W. B. Yeats poem about the 1916 rising in Dublin.

Through the Barricades by Spandau Ballet

Mother doesn't know where love has gone
She says it must be youth
That keeps us feeling strong
See it in her face, that's turned to ice
And when she smiles she shows
The lines of sacrifice
And now I know what they're saying
When the sun begins to fade
And we made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Father made my history
He fought for what he thought
Would set us somehow free
He taught me what to say in school
I learned off by heart
But now that's torn in two
And now I know what they're saying
In the music of the parade
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Born on different sides of life
We feel the same
And feel all of this strife
So come to me when I'm asleep
We'll cross the line
And dance upon the street
And now I know what they're saying
When the drums begin to fade
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Oh, turn around and I'll be there
There's a scar through my heart
But I'll bare it again
I thought we were the human race
But we were just another border-line-case
And the stars reach down and tell us
That there's always one escape.

I don't know where love has gone
And in this troubled land
Desperation keep us strong
Friday's child is full of soul
With nothing left to lose
There's everything to go
And now I know what they're are saying
It's a terrible beauty we've made
So we make our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Now I know what they're are saying
As hearts go to their graves
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

My Grandfather

My grandfather used to sit
On a simple wooden chair
Outside his small room
In a dusty, ancient Calcutta tenement building.

Broken sunbeams lay on the ground, brilliant.
Interrupted patchwork of shadow and light in the open plaza,
Within enclosed cement and tile
umber and gold, muted.

My Dadu was a proud man
Era of Indian Independence in his blood
Freedom and veracious ideals.
He filled his chair with girth and authority.

With cane in hand and ominous presence
He would sit toothless
Central
Brooding
Observing.

Remember I a small child, running down the long dark crooked alley
That wove inside and through other crumbling buildings
Shifting and cutting angles. Abrupt.
Then unexpectedly huge
His dominion.

And I would stop in my tracks
and shuffle past. Quiet. From a different world, a different generation.
Afraid again to say
“Dadu, I love you.”

Uncontrolled my tears
The last time we said “Goodbye”.
In his perfect Oxford English
He said I would never see him again.

I wonder now what he used to think…
Perhaps about his youth
And how success had shown him
Her generous hand for a few brief years
And how in a game of karmic trickery
She closed her bright eyes,
Turning away from him
Leaving only the reminder of golden light
Intangible at his feet.

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.