Marginalia: Poems from the Old Irish Louis McKee

Marginalia: Poems from the Old Irish
Translation by Louis McKee
Adastra Press
$18


It is clear that the monks who wrote these nineteen poems in Marginalia had a good time writing them; that Louis McKee enjoyed translating them; and that Gary Metras at Adastra Press got a kick out of printing them in this beautiful little volume in the original Gaelic as well as English. Some might call these quatrains “slight,” but they are, after all, marginalia, and in order to appreciate them fully, one must imagine the mindset of the men who wrote them. As McKee describes them in his brief introduction, they spent “long hours in scriptoriums copying the texts of gospels,” but would “occasionally…stray from their tedious work and take a moment to jot their own thoughts.”

The thoughts of these monks range from the sublime to the ridiculous, as these two translations will demonstrate:

O God, give me a bowl of tears
to wash away my sins;
or I will be like the dry earth,
without blessing, without blossom.

·

And good for a man with a pig—
I used to have pig myself:
it is better, the pig walking with you,
yesterday’s pig is but today’s fart.

The monks – or, at least, our translator, Louis McKee – seem to tend more toward the ridiculous, or, at least, the humorous. One imagines that they would have needed to inject a little humor in their tedious work, and they often to do it rather deftly. Here are a few examples:

No doubt, you’ll see the fox run
circles around those who chase after him:
but with all respect to my sly friend,
many a man is warmed by his fine pelt.

·

Silk, gold, silver,
music, and verses in Latin
gifted even to the finest pup,
still he’ll not be a gentleman.

·

What gives, Father?
Why are you up there on a high horse,
doing the good work St. Francis did
perfectly well on his own two feet?

The last poem borders on the blasphemous, addressing God with a certain amount of contempt. I imagine that this was not the only monk who used marginalia to express theological doubts, though this is the only example in this brief collection.

Finally, like all poets, these monks had much to say about writing poetry. Let us leave the reader with these commentaries on the art:

I write, and I will write,
as long as my stomach is full;
let me get hungry, though,
and poetry be damned!

·

They tell me
he has no horses for poems;
he gives what he thinks they are worth—
a cow.

My favorite – and the most contemporary sounding – of the comments is:

Don’t be blaming the poets, man—
it’s not their fault;
you will get no more from a pot,
than what’s in it.



Lawrence Kessenich
September 27, 2008



It is clear that the monks who wrote these nineteen poems in Marginalia had a good time writing them; that Louis McKee enjoyed translating them; and that Gary Metras at Adastra Press got a kick out of printing them in this beautiful little volume in the original Gaelic as well as English. Some might call these quatrains “slight,” but they are, after all, marginalia, and in order to appreciate them fully, one must imagine the mindset of the men who wrote them. As McKee describes them in his brief introduction, they spent “long hours in scriptoriums copying the texts of gospels,” but would “occasionally…stray from their tedious work and take a moment to jot their own thoughts.”

The thoughts of these monks range from the sublime to the ridiculous, as these two translations will demonstrate:

O God, give me a bowl of tears
to wash away my sins;
or I will be like the dry earth,
without blessing, without blossom.

·

And good for a man with a pig—
I used to have pig myself:
it is better, the pig walking with you,
yesterday’s pig is but today’s fart.

The monks – or, at least, our translator, Louis McKee – seem to tend more toward the ridiculous, or, at least, the humorous. One imagines that they would have needed to inject a little humor in their tedious work, and they often to do it rather deftly. Here are a few examples:

No doubt, you’ll see the fox run
circles around those who chase after him:
but with all respect to my sly friend,
many a man is warmed by his fine pelt.

·

Silk, gold, silver,
music, and verses in Latin
gifted even to the finest pup,
still he’ll not be a gentleman.

·

What gives, Father?
Why are you up there on a high horse,
doing the good work St. Francis did
perfectly well on his own two feet?

The last poem borders on the blasphemous, addressing God with a certain amount of contempt. I imagine that this was not the only monk who used marginalia to express theological doubts, though this is the only example in this brief collection.

Finally, like all poets, these monks had much to say about writing poetry. Let us leave the reader with these commentaries on the art:

I write, and I will write,
as long as my stomach is full;
let me get hungry, though,
and poetry be damned!

·

They tell me
he has no horses for poems;
he gives what he thinks they are worth—
a cow.

My favorite – and the most contemporary sounding – of the comments is:

Don’t be blaming the poets, man—
it’s not their fault;
you will get no more from a pot,
than what’s in it.



Lawrence Kessenich
September 27, 2008