(40) ''Tá an cogadh thart,' ar sise'

Publication Instance Details #1214

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	War Genocide
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Second World War Genocide: Holocaust
Irish Context	WW II (Ireland)
Languages	Irish
Genre	Part Of Lyric Sequence
Medium	Print Anthology
Notes	This poem is part of the lyric sequence, 'Seabhac ag Guairdeall', in which the poet describes aspects of his childhood, viewed through the lens of Irish neutrality during World War II. In this poem, the fortieth and final section of the sequence, the speaker describes his mother's infectious joy at the conclusion of World War II. He writes in his diary of the war being finished. There is a sense of a loss of innocence throughout this sequence, as the priest in this poem mentions that he has come to 'aois na céille' = the 'age of sense'. This age of knowledge comes with the understanding of war and the horrors of genocide, as the speaker slowly comes to appreciate what Belsen means - a notorious Nazi death camp. The mechanical hawk of death, which appears elsewhere in the sequence, is mentioned again in this poem.