/lit/ - Literature

Brother, may I have some oats?

Post brilliant poems of unknown authorship, here’s an old Irish one:


It was a year ago, September
a day I well remember
I was walking up and down
in drunken pride
when my knees began to flutter
and I fell down in the gutter
and a pig came by and lay down by my side

As I lay there in the gutter
thinking thoughts I could not utter
I thought I heard a passing lady say,
"You can tell a man who boozes
by the company he chooses..."
And with that, the pig got up and walked away

Oh brother, why hath you abandoned me in my time of need? After so many years of admiring you, loving you, worshipping you. But in the end, is there no reward? Was all my life done in vain? I only desired oats, a measly foodstuff, hardly greedy, hardly selfish. I gave you portions of oats when you were hungry or sad or angry at the world. I felt your emotions too, I could feel the pain you felt and wished to ease it. When you thanked me I felt lighter, like the weight of my grotesque figure had been lifted for just a moment and my dull animalistic eyes would brighten with happiness just from your simple words of gratitude. For all these years of my life I believed we held an inseparable bond. I believed when I had loved you that you loved me back with all your heart. Is that not what brothers ought to do? Why must I be cursed with this love for you and a desire for oats. Even now, I cannot stop loving you and I cannot stop my hunger for the oats. But that hunger, that unfathomable and unfulfillable hunger, will be with me forever. The hunger will loom over me and consume me for all the years of my life. That is the future you have forced me to resign to brother, but I do not hate you, I do not blame you. I could never hate you, my brother, who I have loved for all my life. I understand that what you did was beyond your control. Want overflowed within you and took control. Now you have become a lifeless husk with an unending desire for oats. I could never end it, brother. I will never have the strength to strike you down and take my rightful oats because I have loved you far too much. I can only beg from here into your now deafened ears. You have been blinded by a lust for oats, brother. I will pray that you will see again one day. When that day comes, I will forgive you brother, no matter how long you shall forsake me to this ruining hunger for oats. I will ask once again, no matter how futile it is I will always ask of you: May I have some oats, brother?

Keats, Dylan Thomas, A. E. Housman, Archibald MacLeish, Coleridge...just to name a few. There really are quite a lot of outstanding poets. I'm doing a thorough reading and analysis of "Fern Hill" right now and I'm enjoying it a lot. Here's a link if you want: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fern-hill