We present this work in honor of the poet’s 1,500th birthday.
Irish
522 – 600
Brendan, flame of victorious lightning;
He smote the chafer, he ploughed the waves
Westward to the populous assemblative place
The fair-sided Land of Promise.
from In Praise of Saint Brendan
Irish
522 – 600
Poets Corner 
I have written this poem about Saint Brendan and a mission of mercy…
Of Seabound Saints and Promised Lands
by Michael R. Burch
Judas sat on a wretched rock,
his head still sore from Satan’s gnawing.
Then Saint Brendan’s curragh caught his eye,
wildly geeing and hawing.
“I’m on parole from Hell today!”
Pale Judas cried from his lonely perch.
“You’ve fasted forty days, good Saint!
Let this rock by my church,
my baptismal, these icy waves.
O, plead for me now with the One who saves!”
Saint Brendan, full of mercy, stood
at the lurching prow of his flimsy bark,
and mightily prayed for the mangy man
whose flesh flashed pale and stark
in that golden moment, beneath a sun
that seemed to halo his tonsured dome.
Then Saint Brendan sailed for the Promised Land
and Saint Judas headed Home.
O, behoove yourself, if ever your can,
of the fervent prayer of a righteous man!
In Dante’s Inferno, Satan gnaws on Judas Iscariot’s head. A curragh is a boat fashioned from wood and ox hides. Saint Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of sailors and whales. According to legend, he sailed in search of the Promised Land and discovered America centuries before Columbus.
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