72. Mad

72.
Mad

Why do the Irish go mad? Because we feel.
Must we be ground beneath another’s heel?
Must we live and must we die, must we laugh and must we cry?
Oh yes, we talk the hind legs off a donkey, and often act the monkey.
We kill, we love, we play the fiddle, and muddle along in the middle.
Our worst is hate, our best is great, we sing, we soar, we give more.
Do you want a story told? Ask Paddy, pure gold.
Heaven, Hell and Purgatory are there for everyone to see.
Including me.
The Irish may be mad.
But they’re not bad.
Indifference is what gets you most.
Oh God, come back, oh Holy Ghost!
Still, at our best we do so well, tell the begrudgers to go to Hell!
We talk out of both sides, you know.
It only goes to show.
We like to have it both ways.
All our days.
Will we never get things straight? All things come when you wait.
It rains a lot, it makes grass green. The greenest grass I’ve ever seen.
We’re not as green as we’re cabbage looking.
Emigrating, ticket booking.
Would you like to be in our good books? 
Then don’t give us dirty looks.
We write good books, do you know that?
The cat sat on the mat.
That’s a bit of writing there, it came out of the air.
My dark Rosaleen, Kathleen mavourneen, Finnegan’s Wake.
I’ll tell you a story, how long will it take?
Once upon a time, in a land far away, a man said, I haven’t got all day.
I have a year, or more or less, wait ‘till I tell you, you’ll never guess.
This story goes on until the end of time, it goes around in circles, I tell it in rhyme.
There is no rhyme or reason to what I have to say, one thing is for sure, gossoon, it will take all day.
That’s all I have to say.
Until another day.
Irish people, pub, Pope, church steeple, throw me a rope!
Anyway, I’ve got to say I love it here.
With or without green beer.
Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself has said, this is my own, my native land.
Robbie Burns said that. That’s grand.
It’ll do to be going on with, until the real thing comes along.
I end my song.
Music, love, laughter, wine.
Have a good time!