Writing For the Commonest Ear

no knave brought to book

Who has won a drunken cheer—

The witty man and his joke

Aimed at the commonest ear,

The clever man who cries

The catch cries of the clown
~ “The Fisherman” W.B. Yeats

Too many guffaws against politeness laws
Words of hate uttered to sneer
Bask in the glory of the nyeucks story
Aimed at the commonest ear.

From those from whom his folks fled, lest they be dead:
Has he listened to the prejudice about them?
They drink, wont work and steal: that whats thought of them for real
But those are wrong to think that about him.

He has, he thinks the knack, of having the craic,
Its free speech, its not a bit racist
No fan of PC, yet I still cannot see
Now not hateful is his verse as its basest.

He never read Smith, not one little bit
Who of Gypsies in space in his time mused:
It would be a space where bigotry’s not commonplace
Where for their blood his people would not be abused.

Glossary: Charlie Smith was a Rominchal poet, author of the poem “Space Gypsies”. Written in reaction to a piece by a fellow writer, who has a piece “Gypsies in Space” poking fun at Travellers, and reads it to universal cringing and the guffaws of bigots and Middle Irelanders,  forgetting a lot of the British stereotypes of the native Irish in Ulster is the same.

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