O Derry Boy - read it

 
 
 

    O Derry Boy by Mervyn Cooke
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You read and you said...

Mornin' Mowen, I finished reading the book.

I should confess that I am not a poetry lover. I have tried to like it. I have tried different poets, different languages ... but sadly, it doesn't capture my imagination like a good story. So, I think I am ill equipped to pass any judgement on poetry, because it doesn't stir me.

Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect. 

A New Day Dawns

We set off one morning at 4 am and climbed 1500 steps in darkness, Orion's belt high in the sky.

We could have touched it. We could see the Great Bear. The sky sparkled a million diamonds.

The darkness laid down its head and a new day came to greet us. For all, our last day on the Great Wall.

Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao) said
" bu dao Chang Cheng fei hao han "
          不到长城非好汉
(whoever doesn't reach the Great Wall is not a real man)

In the mighty valleys and hills of Simatai, that morning, we had just become men.

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a childhood in pictures and poems