Pádraic MacPearais, my namesake and a poet, was put to death following the 1916 Easter uprising, in which a band of rebel Irish waged revolution against nearly eight centuries of English occupation. The first poems I was given were four by MacPearais (rendered Pearse, when anglicized), which were written out by hand in my grandmother's impeccable cursive. He was not only a poet, she informed me, he was a revolutionary who wanted the freedom of his own native land, language, customs and autonomy. He was, and this last most seriously, also a martyr. “The pen is mightier than the sword” is not an idle expression.
Think about it.
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They are banning books again, not that they ever stopped. Libraries—librarians—become criminal, like Trans kids and their bodies and their parents and doctors; like women's bodies—and their doctors. Like speaking out against apartheid or obstructing the genocidal pathway of another new oil pipeline. We all slowly become criminal—our bodies, our pens and the words we bring from ether to page.
“First they came for the Communists/and I did not speak out/because I was not a Communist”.
Martin Nimöller's meditation on complicity is immortal because butchery and cowardice are ever among us. So, too courage. Everywhere people use their voices if they have nothing else. Everywhere poets take up the pen—holy rebels and lunatics and dreamers of peace—and retrieve fire from Heaven in a time of spiritual famine.
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I had thought to write about Palestine and Israel—about diplomacy, reparations and the conversations about racism, bigotry and colonisation that it seems we need to be having—but I looked in my notebook and saw that today, the only truth I know is that a word after a word after a word is power. Today it is raining, and my voice is small and what can I say from the safety of this room, listening to people laughing in the street below as they dodge puddles and make plans for dinner.
I cannot write of war today because I am at peace, of a fashion, and it would be hypocritical to speak of anything so horrific while the streets around me hum, safe and ordinary. I think of another quote by Marie Howe: language is all we have left of action. I am not sure I entirely understand or agree—but I shall meditate on it as I clean and watch the nightmares in the news and perhaps scribble some poetry—trying to retrieve some more fire from Heaven.