Let me not go tamely out to sea
the eternal sea
the only sea
that waves us on to oblivion.
O let me rant and roar as the very waves
as always down all the bruised days of my reckoning .
Let me shout and scream and laugh and curse
and pray in the hollow rock of my penitence.
Christ, you all-seeing son of an inconceivable woman,
don't let me die between the sheets
or even between the thighs of some foolish ready woman.
Let me die with the wild wind in my few hairs
the mad Irish weather scudding over my mind
the bitter-sweet aftertaste of oaken beer
anointing my senses.
O Lord of wine and water
fire and snow
purifier and destroyer of all my days
grant me this;
that when I die
it will be under an Irish sky.
Christy Brown
Christy Brown was born in Crumlin, Dublin, in 1932. One of thirteen surviving children, he suffered from cerebral palsy and was considered mentally disabled until he famously snatched a piece of chalk from his sister with his left foot. His autobiography, My Left Foot (London, Secker & Warburg, 1954/New York, Simon & Schuster, 1955), was later expanded into the novel Down All The Days (Secker & Warburg/ New York/Stein & Day, 1970), and became an international best seller, being translated into fourteen languages. There followed other novels including A Shadow on Summer (Secker & Warburg/Stein & Day, 1976). He also published a number of poetry collections including Come Softly to My Wake (Secker & Warburg, 1971), published in America as Poems of Christy Brown (New York, Stein & Day, 1971); Background Music: Poems (Secker & Warburg/Stein & Day, 1973); Of Snails And Skylarks (Secker & Warburg,1978); and Wild Grow the Lilies (Secker & Warburg/Stein & Day, 1976). With his wife Mary Carr he settled in Ballyheigue, Co Kerry, and also in Parbrook, Somerset, UK, where he died in 1981.
