What I never knew

What I never knew

I never knew those times of donkeys and turf smoke,
The smell of corduroy wet in the rain,
mornings of such pale green and the stone walls grey in the half-light.

I never knew those times of silence in sunken lanes,
only the clipping of hoof-beats and larks rising.

I was not born when those times were grown rare,
and the poets were writing their longing for home
sitting where the sea meets the shore,
and only the eye and the heart travel across the divide.

I never knew those times, but my grandparents did,
and who are we but shoots of the old tree,
scions of the sod that birthed us all?

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Author: Jane Dougherty

I used to do lots of things I didn't much enjoy. Now I am officially a writer. It's what I always wanted to be.

10 thoughts on “What I never knew”

      2. There’s a lot of silliness talked about ‘roots’ and ‘in the blood’ etc. Often by people who have lost any link they might have had with a world that isn’t the one they live in now. The future is what is important, the only thing we might be able to influence by doing something here and now.

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      3. Humans today are altogether too concerned with navel gazing. I wonder if it was always so, or that social media makes us more aware of it.

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      4. I think the striving for ‘individualism’ has a lot to do with it. We no longer feel part of a country, nation or whatever, which was a sentiment that could be manipulated by populists, obviously. But the me culture, my well-being, my mental health ie what suits me, takes precedence over the collective good. We pride ourselves on being more open-minded and less subservient than people of the past, but we’re just as subservient to consumerism and this obsession with the inner workings of our psyches.

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      5. The populists still seem to be thriving here. The US is full of navel gazing populists, invented victimhood, people who think they “deserve”.
        We are in very deep trouble. It keeps me up at night and darkens my days.

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      6. It’s a mind disease that has spread throughout the first world. The irony is that the narcissists who claim victimhood and special person status also scream fascist bigot and demand they are shut up at anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

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