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Love Letter

from Visionaries 1916 by Lorcan Mac Mathuna

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about

Love letter by Joseph Mary Plunkett. Read by Elaine O'Dea
Accompanied by Martin Tourish

lyrics

I am not writing this letter for you to read, that would be impossible because I know we cannot go back to before the irrevocable happened. But just to ease my heart where this has so often been written; if a new kind of pain can be called ease (I think it can)

I never said rightly what I meant; I just made blind rushes at speaking and got all tangled. I am not doing much better now but the hopelessness seems to make it easier to be clear and anyway my failure this time won’t make tragedy.

It is not six months since I left my country, home, friends, and you for your sake? Have I not even abstained from writing from you? What greater works could love have done than these?

You would not stand accused to yourself of having led me to my hurt – you would give me no encouragement. Did you then know so little of love as to think it needed encouragement? Did you not know that love devours famine like a flame? That it follows lack as air fills a vacuum? And if encouragement were needed was there not yourself, sweeter and more dreadful than any rose.

It was my misfortune; it is my despair that the only hope for me lay beyond your understanding, buried in what was to you a foreign tongue. Only in my poems is there anything worthy of your love, and even the celestial glories of which I have written I seem to have obscured with my own murky personality.

But I can at least praise god that I have seen his glory in you and not kept silent.

I loved your beauty while you slept
And wept that you should wake to pain
While brain and heart the vigil kept
Stepped lightly that your dreams remain.

Joseph Mary Plunkett, Sept 21st 1915, New York

credits

from Visionaries 1916, released August 30, 2022

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Lorcan Mac Mathuna image

Lorcan Mac Mathuna Dublin, Ireland

From the cradle Lorcán Mac Mathúna was surrounded by traditional irish music. Sean-Nós singing was the soundscape of his youth, the air he breathed.

Drawing on the deep roots of Sean-Nós he has brought the fundamentals of this ancient tradition into contemporary collaborations and compositions. He is truly a modern singer who sits comfortably with ancient tradition and the avant-garde. ... more

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