Sinister: A Century of Wakers

[P F]

The sky above is pale blue, paler than eyes. The
clouds cirrus is it or no cumulus are wispy and blown
across the corners of the sky. I was going to say: it
is always sunny on Bloomsday - but no: two years agao
the rain tipping down as Spain's penalties put the
Republic out and the barmen started removing their
leprechaun hats; sheets of rain down the quays to
O'Conell Bridge, festivities cancelled.

Cirrus it is after all.

Monday night: roygbiv is that all the colours it is on
the edge of the air at Sandymount. Dogs live and liver
chasing each others' tails across the packed sand.
Cocklerpickers, ghost ships. Bailey light comes on in
the distance, too far and fast flashing for a
photograph.

The next day from St Stephen's, that is, Troussé's,
Green, wander South hardly knowing a destination:
Leeson Street South, Morehampton Road, Donnybrook
Road. Trees line avenues: concrete banks like old
fortified police stations of 1919: pubs, estate agents
and takeaways declare their location, like the
Drumcondra Laundry. A dacent bookshop here, all this
way out in nowhere, somewhere, Dublin visitors don't
seek, beyond the slow jet of the canal, up to the
crooked line of the Dodder. Follow that to the coast?
No - I am on a trek now: head south again, up to a bus
stop where the advert for sausages depicts JJ and the
schoolgirls turn out to be holidaying Americans.

Endless roads of grey matter down south into
anonymity: Stillorgan feels like a trellis of
highways. 1960s modernization Ireland. The bus heads
off the map, takes in every available permutation of
the posters for European election candidates with
their warm real phoney gas man TD smiles. Dun
Laoghaire and south with little fuel in me own tank.
Scent of the rocks below the tower where I clambered
the day after two years gone, the day after Robbie
Keane hit two pens on target and went out. I ask the
curator if he remembers me.

- Struggling to remember... the context.
I don't tell him it was the Kaiser's school we spoke
at. Busy?

- Rushed off my feet.
- Literally.
- Literally. Like you-know-who.
Heading out again I declare,
- I'll be back.
One day.

Pints below the stained glass of Fitzgerald's where
the oldsters aggressively ask each other,
- Would you like a drink?
and the curate brings me mine and offers a merely
approximate charge at first.

The clouds grow, come together, drift off. May today
the streets take you where you or they will. Be light
lucky and lovely.




		
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