Episode 4 Inheritance-voices ringing in my ear.

☘An Spailpín Spánach🌻

Episode 4

INHERITANCE - voices ringing in my ear.

A poem inspired by a saying coined or passed on to my mother from past generations which disproves that neither the pen nor the sword are mightier than the wound that can be inflicted by the piercing word! Closing with the melodious tones of the Bells of Shandon Steeple on the banks of My Own Lovely Lee.

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INHERITANCE

Voices ringing in my ear.
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It is said that the pen is be mightier than the sword, but in my view a sharp tongue licks them both.
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Your father will never be dead while you're alive, said she to me one day out of the blue in a way that only an Irish mother can cut one down to size with a sharp thrust of her tongue that would put a knight in shiny armour to shame.
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Those searing words caught me off guard and left me wounded there and then and for years after, waylayed and scarred for life, I recall her piercing tone at this remove, though my wound is well cautorized now. When her ire was ruffled she took no prisoners.
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I fealt like Sancho Panza taking a blow for Don Quixote who was off on some knight errant or other and was not there present to defend himself. Of course that did'nt matter much as it was a double entandre that was forged and tempered by a master wordsmith in the firey furnace of the family forge that raged hot in the recess of her mind and regularly spewed out lines of inherited folk wisdom that one caught and retained before they petered out on the kitchen floor.
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On the surface she bore her heart on her sleeve for she posessed a gentle mother mochree empathy, but woe betide anyone who crossed swords with her at an inopportune time while she was ruminating on things to herself, for she had a sharp Irish wit that cut both ways like a double edged dagger which she wielded with a Pirate Queens precision. or she could aim her razor like one liners with deadly accuracy, just as effective as one could weald a curved cutlass, selling no hostages to fortune, neither son nor father alike.
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Though both have since succumbed to the levelling syth of the grim reaper these long years past, their words rhyme down the byegon decades and sometimes late at night I awaken from unconcious dreams to hear my mother call my name in rosary prayer.
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Then I hear myself give voice to my fathers response as he answers for me in all but name, while I momentarily lost in silent reverie still ponder the meaning of this existence between realms, repeating the prophesy of the pious trinity, like father, like son, and the spirit that floats between, as it ever was in the beginning and ever shall be, it started with the word and it cut deep.