RIP Shane MacGowan

Sad solemn notes and crates of newly drawn stout.

The usual symptoms when a life goes out,

but the extinction this time being seven times the most.

The music held no echo, and the tears drowned our toast.

Sorrow and bereavement, life has no meaning now: silence is master.

Laughter and song bowed, for gone went our great captain to some more hospitable inn

where cant and hypocrisy can no longer embarrass him.

This hurts more than the loss of both Mark E Smith and Lou Reed. I can't adequately express my grief at his passing, nor my gratitude for giving the diaspora a voice. He was our poet laureate and I would never have become a writer if it were not for the inspiration his lyrics provoked and the permission his existence provided, especially in  such songs as The Old Main Drag, Streams of Whiskey, Broad Majestic Shannon or Birmingham Six.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam