Musings and Poetry

written by Charlie Haughey

Musings

I never broke my word in politics.

I had always to keep clearly in mind that I was running a country and not simply an economy.

I never made a decision or took an action that was not motivated totally by the public good in so far as I could judge it.

I only ever wished to be in power in order to be able to use it for the benefit of people.

There is no-one from whom you cannot learn something.

When dealing with your own children you must always emphasise that you trust them and believe in them.

Potentially a very dangerous phrase “I know…”

Time softens/ heals everything.

The process of learning about one’s self, life and the world around us never stops.

When dealing with young people try to recall how you thought and felt when you were their age.

Don’t let the plan become the end.

The only real discipline is self-discipline.

Never go to the brink, you might be pushed over by a “friend”.

A difficult situation should be seen solely as an opportunity for providing a brilliant solution.

In a group or committee people rarely give their real reason for opposing a proposal.

To live is to strive for the unobtainable, to reach dangerously out over the edge, toward some far-off elusive fragment of success.

On Gorbachev (8th December 1999)

“He changed the world totally and for the better.”

“He freed millions of people everywhere from the tyranny of the one-party police state, ended the cold war and the threat of nuclear devastation that had hung over mankind for forty years.”

“And all this was brought about without the carnage of the world war or bloody internecine purges but by the sheer power of intellect and personality.”

Poetry

Pearse

“You spoke in simple words

Found great beauty in quiet places

If you had lived would you have revealed to us

That excellence that seems to have

Seeped away centuries ago in to

The brown bogs”

Dáil Lobby

“Here Malton’s noble prints are arranged around,

The muted lobby in this well profound

A dull debate drags on as Pearse

In bronze looks sternly down

And everything’s in solemn brown”

Abbeville Trees

“I planted tees

And watched them grow

Here in Abbeville

Their budding branches ushering in

The yearly miracle of spring

Smooth, stately beeches

Holding up the sky

Leafy, fruitful walnut trees,

Patient oak looking centuries ahead

Mountain ash and weeping larch,

Conquering chestnuts, sturdy birch

Here they stand, lords of the land,

The countryside belongs to them.”

Afterrain

“Right across the countryside

A strange sort of interlude

Always seems to follow

The ending of a summer shower

As the pattern of rain dies away

A general hush descends

Everything is muted; as if the following rain

had spread its own mantle of silence over everything

Traces of the recent rain

Are still everywhere around

The grass still glistens with moisture

Droplets still clinging to the leaves on the trees

Then suddenly,

Out of the foilage

A small bird will invariably emerge

A robin or a darting blackbird

Its mere appearance seems to send a signal

That the interlude of silence is over

And it is time for all the normal sounds

Of nature, birdsong, the cawing of rooks,

The creaking of branches to start up again”

The Afterrain is over.