Donagh’s Reviews > A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake > Status Update

Who Killed James Joyce?
-Patrick Kavanagh

Who killed James Joyce?
I, said the commentator,
I killed James Joyce
For my graduation.

What weapon was used
To slay mighty Ulysses?
The weapon that was used
Was a Harvard thesis.

How did you bury Joyce?
In a broadcast Symposium.
That’s how we buried Joyce
To a tuneful encomium.

Who carried the coffin out?
Six Dublin codgers
Led into Langham Place
By W. R. Rodgers.

Who said the burial prayers? –
Please do not hurt me –
Joyce was no Protestant,
Surely not Bertie?

Who killed Finnegan?
I, said a Yale-man,
I was the man who made
The corpse for the wake man.

And did you get high marks,
The Ph.D.?
I got the B.Litt.
And my master’s degree.

Did you get money
For your Joycean knowledge?
I got a scholarship
To Trinity College.

I made the pilgrimage
In the Bloomsday swelter
From the Martello Tower
To the cabby’s shelter.

I’ve been made a mug of
(But I barely have a degree so I can claim this isn’t about me)

Not ta tall, just having a dig at literature academics as all literature academics love to do

Sure you and Kavanagh would get on like a house on fire

Picked myself up a short collection of his poems there so I can get to know him better