Unit 1.4 – Irish Poetry
Difficulty: Hard
Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds
A Priceless Simplicity by Pat Ingoldsby
You sat in beside me on the bus
because you wanted to.
You talked to me with
a lovely loud open voice
which doesn’t know the meaning
of shyness or inhibition
or fear of saying the wrong thing
and many people in this world
would call you simple.
You have got free travel
because your special allowance
isn’t really very special
and nobody would ever dream
of giving you a job
unless they needed a man to
clean out a public convenience.
Everybody upstairs on the bus
heard every lovely disabled
word that you spoke
but nobody turned around to see the lovely man who was speaking them.