{"id":14144,"date":"2024-04-14T22:55:37","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T21:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=14144"},"modified":"2024-04-14T23:41:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T22:41:35","slug":"poetry-pangur-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=14144","title":{"rendered":"POETRY: Pangur B\u00e1n"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Doorkins Magnificat, RIP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Pangur B\u00e1n and I at work,
Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:
His whole instinct is to hunt,
Mine to free the meaning pent.
 
More than loud acclaim, I love
Books, silence, thought, my alcove.
Happy for me, Pangur B\u00e1n
Child-plays round some mouse\u2019s den.
 
Truth to tell, just being here,
Housed alone, housed together,
Adds up to its own reward:
Concentration, stealthy art.
 
Next thing an unwary mouse
Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.
Next thing lines that held and held
Meaning back begin to yield.
 
All the while, his round bright eye
Fixes on the wall, while I
Focus my less piercing gaze
On the challenge of the page.
 
With his unsheathed, perfect nails
Pangur springs, exults and kills.
When the longed-for, difficult
Answers come, I too exult.
 
So it goes. To each his own.
No vying. No vexation.
Taking pleasure, taking pains,
Kindred spirits, veterans.
 
Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,
Pangur B\u00e1n has learned his trade.
Day and night, my own hard work
Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

Seamus Heaney\u2019s translation, from 9th C. Old Irish, of an anonymous monk\u2019s poem.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Faith, the cat, of St Augustine\u2019s Watling St:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Survivor of The Blitz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pangur B\u00e1n and I at work,Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:His whole instinct is to hunt,Mine to free the meaning pent. More than loud acclaim, I loveBooks, silence, thought, my alcove.Happy for me, Pangur B\u00e1nChild-plays round some mouse\u2019s den. Truth to tell, just being here,Housed alone, housed together,Adds up to its own reward:Concentration, stealthy art. Next thing an unwary … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “POETRY: Pangur B\u00e1n”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-3G8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14144"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14150,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14144\/revisions\/14150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}