Thomas O'Brien was born in 1914 in Dublin. It is difficult to paint an image of him. Though there is one story I think throws light
onto what drove him, which he told me when I was a young woman. When he was about fourteen he asked a priest two poignant
questions of which I remember the story of one. The Roman Catholic church was powerful in Ireland then, it decreed if a child died
before being christened, his or her soul would go to limbo, an in-between place between heaven and hell.
My father could not reconcile how a religion based on love would damn the soul of an innocent child to such a place,
he asked a priest why this was so, the question could not be answered, this moved him to search elsewhere for meaning.
Politics became important, he engaged in the Irish struggle, the workers and the anti fascist movement.
Above all he was a poet, in his 20s and 30s he wrote plays, which were performed in Dublin by
The New Theatre Group whose members comprised of radicals and intellectuals. He was not widely published, some periodicals
and newspapers, two anthologies - New Irish Poets 1948 and Goodbye Twilight 1936. In 1994 The O'Brien Press published
Strong Words, Brave Deeds by Gustav Klaus, which features his poetry and focuses on his political and intellectual life of the 30s and 40s.
Later in life he liked to paint and explore colour and light. He painted the above west of Ireland landscape.
He loved the English language, studied its nuances, his reading covered a wide range from James Joyce's Ulysses,
great international novelists, Shakespeare to the Mystics of Tibet. He usually read two or three books at a time,
kept them at hand in his jacket pockets. Our conversations tended to focus on the meaning of things,
on the deep issues that move people to be who they are.
Deborah O'Brien
There was so much I wanted to accomplish
outside of armies
that I grudged my countries service.
I cursed this war a thousand times
for waste of human life and energy.
There is no trumpet to glorify war
for solders who have known it;
there are no heroes save those
that strut across the scarless mind of peace.
My comrades, dead amongst those hills,
I have seen your maimed bodies flung in careless soil,
heroes all - I know you not as heroes -
would that the world were finished with that word.
from The Last Hill , a play by Thomas O'Brien 1930s
I am my father's daughter.
The same reason that washed upon his shore,
washed upon mine.
What is more, what is less, is but a matter of time.
What is between us,
he the father, me the daughter,
is the one spirit, the one quest
that tests the metal and the metaphor.
You may say that it would be so
we being of the same blood, the same nest,
and sure that may be true.
I am my father's daughter.
The way of rhyme that washed upon his shore,
washed upon mine.
Yet we seldom spoke of poetry,
we talked of things not associated with the verse.
We conversed in matters of the spirit,
of the heart,
sang freedom songs.
His time was a climb and so was mine,
it was the taking off of shackles -
his the bondage to the master
mine the bondage to the man.
I had to do that, just like he had to go fight in Spain.
To say, I am my fathers' daughter is to say -
the same wind which moved his words, moves mine.
We both sought the higher climb
that echoes throughout time,
heard in his day, heard in mime.
We held a candle burning bright
wrote of time space love,
of things low high,
of how why what and when,
of battles on the front,
of longings in our night.
We burnt fire to warm the heart,
feel it's pain,
gain clarity of light.
Saw nature's mirrored face
reflect back her awesome gaze
to shape and flow the rhyme.
So to say, I am my fathers' daughter, is to say -
we are of the one heart,
the one soul,
the one sky.
My Father's Daughter
Deborah O'Brien 2004 ©