An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

First off, I must admit that I was pretty damn excited to see that MacGowan had this up here. I’m a fan of The Pogues, which MacGowan fronts…so, I was eager to listen to someone I knew and a poem I was familiar with since I was quite young (probably the only Yeats poem I've known before my university career).

The poem is obviously a statement on Irish involvement within the war. "Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love" points out the factors of the Irish, who are fighting and defending the English. MacGowan's voice is very non-chalant, in a way that I enjoy it more then I think I should. Having no feeling to it; it is numbing. It seems like it is fitting to the whole poem; the decision to fight was the man's own and now, on flight in the clouds, he goes down. The only moment that matters is the moment he is in and there is no point to worry about the past or the future. His realization that the moment before death is pretty much the only thing that matters; death is the one thing that ends up being true to the balance of everything.

Listening to it, I really did enjoy it. MacGowan, who has always been really positive to the Irish Nationalist idea (though English born to Irish parents), seems to make this whole poem feel haunting. It crawls under my skin and lives there. The long intro to it seems very fitting as well. The drumroll to the fall, if you will. Although, for me...anything with a violin and about war seems more then haunting to an extent.

The poem probably isn't suited for song, but MacGowan presents it in a more "spoken-word" form. I also would not want to probably hear this poem put into any other form; it is supposed to be serious and it is supposed to be spoken. In my own mind, it is supposed to be spoken. It's just...a well performed piece of work. Something that I also believe speaks for itself.

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