"The One," by Patrick Kavanagh

Green, blue, yellow and red –
God is down in the swamps and marshes
Sensational as April and almost incred-
ible the flowering of our catharsis.
A humble scene in a backward place
Where no one important ever looked
The raving flowers looked up in the face
Of the One and the Endless, the Mind that has baulked
The profoundest of mortals. A primrose, a violet,
A violent wild iris – but mostly anonymous performers
Yet an important occasion as the Muse at her toilet
Prepared to inform the local farmers
That beautiful, beautiful, beautiful God
Was breathing His love by a cut-away bog.

+ Patrick Kavanagh

Kavanagh was one of the most prominent Irish poets of the twentieth century; with Seamus Heaney, he’s been required reading for countless Irish schoolchildren. If you’d like to hear the poem read in an Irish brogue (and hey, who wouldn’t!), you can hear another Irish poet read it here.

The poem is a loose sort of sonnet (14 lines, an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme, and a couplet to close), but Kavanagh’s earthy theology undercuts any fussy formalism.

Look how he makes rhyme itself do important work in the poem: rhyming “red” with the “cred” in “incredible,” he stretches out and emphasizes the word “incredible” in a way that reinforces his meaning (“almost incred-ible,” as though the word itself is straining for credulity). And rhyming “violet” with “toilet,” not to mention “God” with “bog,” helps advance his vision of a down-and-dirty richness and beauty in common, overlooked places — even places one might think are despoiled by human activity (a “cut-away bog” is a place where blocks of peat have been cut and taken away for burning).

It’s a great poem for spring, and for Easter in particular, reminding us that, if we have eyes to see, even a remote, forgotten bog is a veritable cathedral full of parishioners.