In the nineteenth century, here in Ireland, we started to walk away
decisively from a native language that was a way of seeing and knowing
things. In the twentieth century we started to walk away from a religion
that in many of its ideas and practices was a folk religion. In this
century we are walking away from local accents, from the big open vowels
upon which so many of our poems depend for their full auditory effect.
Overall, in line with revolutionary ambitions elsewhere in the world, we
have moved from rites that related us to time and eternity to rights
within a body politic. Could it be that we have moved too far, too fast?
The Chinese say that the sage is to be found not walking ahead of
humanity, finding a way for it, but behind it, picking up the
inestimable treasures it leaves behind it in its flight into an
ever-receding future. While he doesn't claim to be a sage, here too is
where we find Moriarty, walking hundreds, even thousands, of years
behind us, picking up things. As its centenary approaches, Invoking
Ireland offers an alternative to the 1916 Easter Rising Proclamation.
Here Moriarty proposes not a Republic but anEnflaith, reinstituting a
Birdreign in which all things live ecumenically with all things, uniting
man with nature, magic and the divine. Standing shamanically and
mystically with the heroes of political thinkers, among them Plato, St
Augustine and Rousseau.
