"The Ballad of Molly Malone" by Shannon Connor Winward, Second Place, 2017

The Ballad of Molly Malone

by Shannon Connor Winward

Second Place, 2017

On the bay of Dublin
the pulse and the din
of the land and the sea breed desire.
The caw of the gulls,
and the roar of the swells,
are known to set hearts afire.

The tide's thrust and tussle,
the dock's clutter and shuffle,
the songs of the sea-faring fellows;
their tenor-tongued sailors
and wine-brazened whalers
and trollers with throats like a bellows

with calls spry and all canty,
lures of ballads and shanties,
choruses romantic and jolly.
Tunes and more they taught her,
the fishmongers' duaghter,
lovely and lively young Molly.

For a verse on the quay
or an in by-and-by,
Molly'd sample their cockles and eels.
The love of the boys put a trill in her voice
and a happy spring in her heels.

With her barrow full-stocked,
every morn Molly hawked,
"Here be fresh oysters and mussels!"
And through streets high and low
her refrain, "Alive-O!"

a melodious boisterous bustle.

Down streets low and high
rolled her come-hither cry
and alwasy earnest custom beset her.
So sweet and so fetching,
her pitch so bewitching,
t'was sure no fishwife fared better.

But as cathedral bells linger,
so the pretty youn singer
did echo with love's tainted thrum.
'Ere a long red fever
o'er took and besieged her
and the merry maid Molly was done.

Or so it was thought,
when the coffin was bought
and the lass shut up within,

only to awake in the Night
bereft of all sight
and sound in the ground of Dublin.

No street aria could rival
Molly's plea for survival,
Alive! Here! Alive! O!
Alas she did wail,
but t'was no avail;
all were deaf to the lament below.

In the land of the dead,
the departed are fed
on the clatter and scuff of the living.
A spirit can utter
but a sigh or a flutter
a whisper of spite of misgiving.

With ears slack as hunger,
the yawning wraiths blunder
toward the crackle, the rattle and strife,
the titters and bawling
the orchestral squallin,
to feast on the music of life.

But the fishmongers' daughter,
with a voice like no othter,
fills the street with her ghostly solo,
and for a thousand tomorrows
drives her brimming wheelbarrow
still singing "Alive! Here! O laddies, Alive, Alive-O!"