For Fr Brendan O’Callaghan
Two youngsters on their hillside,
They grew up strong and tall,
Together fished the river,
Together played football.
At eighteen years, the parting—
The one to tend his beasts,
His neighbour to the seminary
To be a priest.
For sixty years, unbroken,
The farmer held his ground,
Married, raised a family,
In mind and body sound;
And then, his old bones aching
From years of toil and chill,
One winter his wife persuades him
To come in from the hill,
That his sons could mind the farm
While he stayed in from the blast
But it played upon his conscience
That he was missing Mass.
Come Lent and in the local church
A Penance Service, though
He still calls it “Confession”
As he learned years ago.
He’s driven to “Confession”
Where, to his surprise,
His old neighbour’s on the altar
With the other priests this night.
Old friendship not forgotten,
He goes to Father Mick
Who greets him like a brother
And asks him how he is.
The farmer makes confession
Laying bare his life,
Telling his confessor
That, out of love, his wife
Has kept him in this winter,
That he’s been missing Mass,
That it bothers him each Sunday
Now the cows are out in grass.
Father Mick is listening
To his neighbour baring all,
“Let you not be in any hurry”, he says,
“Till you hear the cuckoo call”;
For the priest was once a farmer
And worked this windswept hill
And, absolving his old neighbour,
Brings him from the chill,
The chill that is his conscience,
That doesn’t understand
That a time comes when a farmer
Must come in from his land.
And, absolved of his great burden,
He stands up strong and tall
Singing, “I need be in no hurry
Till I hear the cuckoo call”.
“I need be in no hurry
Till I hear the cuckoo call”.