Eleanor Hooker - Crannóg magazine

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Crannóg 20 spring 2009
Published by
Crannóg Media
Galway Language Centre
Bridge Mills
Galway
Ireland
Editorial board:
Sandra Bunting
Gerardine Burke
Jarlath Fahy
Tony O’Dwyer
[email protected]
www.crannogmagazine.com
ISSN 1649-4865
Cover images: Ruth Le Gear
Cover design: Sandra Bunting/Ruth Le Gear
Production: Wordsonthestreet
Printed by e-print Ltd. Dublin
All writing copyrighted to rightful owners in accordance with The Berne Convention
Crannóg acknowledges the assistance of:
Galway City Council
Galway Language Centre
Mill St Study Centre
CONTENTS
Elizabeth Barbato
Who Will Come To Take The Deer Away ............................................6
Martin Burke
Notations ................................................................................................7
Laura Caffrey
The Fire And Drums ..............................................................................9
Phillip Crymble
Say When .............................................................................................10
Orla Fay
Clytie ....................................................................................................11
Caroline England
Words ...................................................................................................12
Sandra Bunting
Corner House .......................................................................................17
Eamon Lynskey
Gravestrips In Sichuan Province West China ......................................23
Ted McCarthy
At The Bottom Of Taylor’s Hill ...........................................................24
James Martyn
On Seeing Jim And Nora On The Beach At Agia Galini, Crete ..........25
Christian Ward
The Garden Next Door .........................................................................26
David Starkey
Murder In The Butterfly Garden ..........................................................27
Benjamin Robinson
Beneath A Lifetime Of Nodding ..........................................................28
Noel Sloboda
Of Arms ................................................................................................31
Brid Fitzpatrick
Approaching Tullamore .......................................................................32
Niamh Boyce
A Wild Cat’s Buffet .............................................................................33
Jarlath Fahy
Self-storage ..........................................................................................38
Clare Sawtell
Polka .....................................................................................................40
Libby Hart
Horses ...................................................................................................41
Patricia Burke Brogan
Memoir With Grykes And Turloughs (Excerpt) ..................................42
Aideen Henry
Skins .....................................................................................................47
Eleanor Hooker
A Whisper Behind The Aspen Trees ...................................................48
Miriam Gallagher
Nina And The Kestrel ..........................................................................49
Christina Manweller
Islands ..................................................................................................54
Dominic Connell
La Belle Époque....................................................................................55
Stephen Mayoff
Thief ....................................................................................................56
Noelle Sullivan
The Night Burn ....................................................................................57
Bee Smith
St Anthony Of The Lost And Found ....................................................58
Anna McKerrow
You Sleep .............................................................................................62
Bibliographical Details ..............................................................................63
Crannóg 20
WHO WILL COME TO TAKE
THE DEER AWAY
ELIZABETH BARBATO
O who will come to take the deer away,
the one I saw at rest upon the earth,
the one who lay before the sleeping school,
the one with the seam on its back,
the red seam, puckered
with the black thread of an early morning frost.
Her belly, all bloat, like a barrel full
of unused time, or an empty machine,
its cogs gone quiet along with the rest of the factory.
Her legs like a thin, unsung madrigal,
the furled white of the tail-flag dimmed,
her eyes a field brown with winter thoughts
and consequence. I do not want the children
to see her, to think about hard ground,
though today I will be forced to listen
to the presentations I assigned on Apartheid,
and on the concentration camps of the Boer War,
their scholars’ eyes moving over statistics
illumined by the lights of history’s oncoming car.
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spring 2009
NOTATIONS
MARTIN BURKE
Begin? - begin with the curve infinity follows
there are many infinities – there are many curves
The flag and the poem
what can ever unite them?
Flowerpots on a balcony
as if this was Cordoba or Athens
This stone from the shrine at Delphi
this stone from the Galway beach
An umbrella in the umbrella stand
who has come to visit?
Black drapes and the windows closed
who has died by deaths permission?
A tattered boat in the harbour
has Odysseus returned?
A young man looking at a statue
a statue looking at a young man
Long shadows on the streets of Cordoba
long shadows on the streets of Brugge
The haiku of her smile
uncontainable in seventeen syllables
The naked beauty of the wife
is this my lewd peeping on the goddess?
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Crannóg 20
The naked beauty of the poem
is this my lewd peeping on the goddess?
That cleric – out of history
as if El Greco painted him
In a hall of mirrors I see the multiplicity of myself
Remembering Cordoba I drink a second coffee
remembering Venice I smoke another cigarette
In Berlin I wear a Star of David
in Jerusalem I dress in an Arab headscarf
And was that you in a high hat passing the hedge just now Will Blake?
Poppies – there by the roadside – innocent – without blame
no history attached
No history
if only this were true
Almost biblical
the manner in which you offer me water
The cat at the window – the boy at the window
each observing that he is observed
So, what is the ending of a poem?
there are many poems – there are many endings
1) The truth of a poem need not be
yet always is - the truth of history
2) Spanish – Greek - Flemish with an Irish residue
as Walcott said: I’m nobody or I’m a nation
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spring 2009
THE FIRE AND DRUMS
LAURA CAFFREY
I remember the fire and drums
And how the sparks became the stars
Of an overcast night.
The sky had sighed in our favour
And held her rains
To let us meet and dance and fall, and
I found you there
Amid the sweet-wine smiles and laughter.
The cool night blue left me
Tangled up in you, and in the morning
I feared;
But you became Pegasus and
The world was a poem.
The notes and lines and
Spaces were filled with
Little explosionsThen greater and greater…
Intense,
Intoxicating,
Wet-lipped I want you.
My Delightful Day,
My Great Escape.
I lay on a cloud
And looked up at a sky
I had not seen before as
The sparks became the stars of
A clear day.
I remember the drums after the fire,
Pounding,
Beating,
Deeper and deeper,
Until the musician played for us alone and
We float away on fire.
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Crannóg 20
SAY WHEN
PHILLIP CRYMBLE
“Had a life-affirming talk with the garbage man today,
he said believe in me, I take the trash away”.
Jim Guthrie — from Save It
Cool outside this morning after several days
of early spring. The daffodils and crocuses
in flower — a dampness in the air from last
night’s rain. What sounds at first like thunder
in the distance turns out to be a cavalcade
of trucks. A crew delivering trash cans
through the neighbourhood — our households
brought together in a contract, bound in kind
to join a common trust. Solemnity: a word
tied up with suffering and love. The newly
grieving widow in a movie — her good shoes
thick with mud. It also means to validate by law.
This shitty world. Each public glad-hand
an indenture. Pretty flowers aren’t enough.
10
spring 2009
CLYTIE
ORAL FAY
Days now I have looked
for my love a god in the sky
to feel the warmth
of divine nourishment.
My foot is always to the ground,
roots and tendrils cling
to my toes and wrap
their fingers around my ankle.
The wind of March is unkind,
bears winter’s melted snow.
Ancestors go with Pluto,
retreat to their season.
The sun calls to the living.
I am the featureless face
of the stone; flat, smooth, clean.
I remember times.
To the ear of the wolf
is the call of the wild.
In the eclipsed moon
there is turmoil of birth.
Drinking earth’s blood
I am changed and continually
Waking.
In my consciousness
the dream calls
and I am a flower maiden.
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Crannóg 20
WORDS
CAROLINE ENGLAND
T
he searing heat of righteousness kept Mrs H company through the
night, at least until the early hours and even then the feeling of having
been wronged, indefinable though it was, still burned in her dreams.
During her waking moments, she tried to identify the cause, to concentrate on
the nub but her mind was in spasm, convulsing with thoughts, moments and
memories but unable to focus on any one thing. Archaic, antiquated. No longer of
relevance, she thought. Mrs H closed her eyes and recounted the books from the
well-stocked library of her childhood home.
She slept again, eventually, and woke at dawn feeling thirsty and vaguely bereft.
Getting herself out of the lofty bed was more of an effort than usual, and she
averted her eyes from the looking glass as she always did. She had been almost
beautiful once and didn’t need to be reminded of a face consumed and robbed by
lonely old age and secret obsession. She cleaned her teeth for longer than usual,
focusing on nothing except the swirl of blood in the bowl when she spat.
Her mind was merciful for the first few hours of the day as she methodically
replaced books in the reference chamber, but it didn’t take long for doubt, regret
even, to elbow through the haze. Sentiment long out of fashion, she thought, lamentable
excess of gush.
Mrs H shook her head from time to time as she cautiously climbed the ladder
to reach the topmost shelves. She had been so confident, so convinced that she
was right, that the time was right. But now she was not so sure. She needed to
concentrate, to think it through, to examine every word, every thought, every
nuance, but despite the notices demanding silence in the chamber, people kept
talking, whispering loudly, asking her questions and interrupting her thoughts.
It wasn’t until Mrs H unwrapped the cloth from her cheese and tomato
sandwich at a table in the far corner of the staff room that she had time to think,
and even then she found herself jotting down words and abstract phrases because
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spring 2009
she still couldn’t focus. Sentences popped into her head unbidden. Want of
originality, want of intensity and, worst of all, want of concentration. There were gaps in
her memory; gaps she didn’t realise were there until she let her mind drift to fill
those gaps with horrible recall. Things that were written; things that she had
written. Things that had seemed so important at the time, but now she was
doubtful.
Lacks perfection and inevitableness of expression, either in the splendid, or in the simple,
style, she recalled. Mrs H sighed and put her head in her hands for a moment
before pulling away the upright chair, causing her untouched sandwich to fall
from the table and collapse on the red tiled floor. Too many flowers, she thought, too
little fruit. The trouble was that she was still having difficulty in getting to the end
of the story in her mind. At every turn she was diverted to another path of
thought, dismal, dark and full of doubt.
“My, you’re in a hurry, Mrs H. No books today, then?” Joseph, the caretaker
commented as she spiralled through the doors of the building. “You’ll be pleased
to see that your New Monthly magazine arrived in the post. I left it on your
bureau,” he called as Mrs H brushed by without saying a word. He stopped
sweeping the steps and looked at her with a frown about his bushy eyebrows, but
Mrs H really didn’t care that she had offended him by failing to stop for a word as
usual; she couldn’t wait to get to the peace and quiet of home. She needed to
steady herself, to think, to prepare for what she had done, for what her future may
hold.
The hot breath Mrs H imagined she had held in all day streamed out of her as
she locked the old oak door behind her and waited for her eyes to become
accustomed to the dark of her hallway. But the silence she had craved all day
suddenly oppressed her, filling her with an urgent desire to speak to someone just
to assure herself she was real. She had been married once, in her nineteenth year,
to George Henning, a Captain of the 3rd Regiment. She had never loved her
husband, nor had she given birth to any child. The Captain was much older than
her and as his health had become impaired by Foreign Service, he had become a
permanent resident in Italy only nine months after their wedding. Since then she
had lived in solitude, with only the companionship of books for so long, that the
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Crannóg 20
only person she could think of was her dear brother, and Harold was long since
gone.
The embers in the grate had lost their blush and the untouched mug of cocoa
had formed a skin, but Mrs H’s milky eyes stared at the benevolent shadows of
the books dwarfing her bedroom. Even with her eyes closed, she could smell their
company.
No enjoyment of extraordinary stimulous. Little evidence of accumulation of time to bring
perfection, she recited to herself. Mrs H closed her eyes and drifted. It was the right
thing to do, the right time to do it, she repeated through the treadmill of
unwelcome thoughts as the second night droned on. She must have slept at some
point as her pillow was wet at day break with the evidence of sleep – saliva, she
supposed, or perhaps even tears. It wasn’t until much later, when enough daylight
cheated its way through the gap in the heavy curtains that Mrs H noticed the stain
was a shining deep crimson.
“You alright, Mrs H? You look like death!” Joseph called as she hurried up the
sodden steps of the library. “You’re early, even for you. I haven’t opened up yet.”
Although her chest hurt and she needed to cough, she smiled at Joseph. Her
need to get to the literature library an hour before the general public made the
effort worth her while. “Open up will you, Joseph. I have so much to do today
and I’m not feeling so good.”
For a few minutes Mrs H stood soundless as a statue in the huge domed
room; she looked all around it, then closed her eyes and breathed deeply to take in
the smell. She then hurried to the section she was looking for, not even bothering
to take off her hat and coat, and slipped into a chair at the vast oak central table.
For a moment she held the book, the original illustrated copy, to her chest and
then carefully laid it on the table, automatically opening the cover to check
whether anyone had borrowed it recently. But as soon as the page was open, a
drop of liquid spilled onto the page, landing in a perfect pear shaped bubble
before dispersing into the absorbent old paper. Mrs H immediately put her hand
to her mouth, drawing it away slowly, and then inspecting the palm of her shaking
hand. There was no doubt about it, she was still bleeding. Someone might notice
14
spring 2009
and make a fuss, the thought of which was unbearable. Mrs H hadn’t taken a day’s
illness for over thirty years at all the different libraries she’d worked, but she knew
that today there was no alternative but to go back home.
“That was quick, Mrs H. You’ve left before you’ve arrived,” Joseph chuckled
at her departing back. “Tell them you’re not well, shall I?” he added, as Mrs H and
her bag full of books disappeared towards the tram stop beyond the willow tree.
As the day drew on and evening emerged, Mrs H toyed with the idea of
writing another letter asking The New Monthly to discard the first. She had spent
so many years in the comfort of the shadows that she was fearful of notoriety, of
attention even. She was aware that many people found her uncommunicative and
eccentric yet the distance it had created suited her. But now the truth was bound
to come out and Mrs H had no idea of how her fellow workers might react to her
carefully concealed secret.
After sporadically pacing the floor boards over several hours, Mrs H sat down
at her bureau, and put ink pen to parchment. Dear Editor, she wrote, but by then
her coughing had become so severe that she could do little else but lie on her bed,
head slightly raised on the pillow with a bundle of rags held to her mouth.
As Mrs H fell in and out of consciousness her mind seemed to recover some
of the clarity she was once famous for. She held up the article in her mind’s eye.
Very popular in her day but archaic, antiquated and no longer relevant to modern times, she
read. Her sensibility has long been out of fashion, her technique deplorably bad. Her popularity
set a most unfortunate precedent for women.
Mrs H felt warmed by her outrage once again. A lamentable excess of original
gush, she continued to read through closed eyes as the night fell away. Her work
suffered from her restricted experience. She relied too much on the influence of others and often
used stereotypic images.
In delirious dreams Mrs H rose from her bed to open the bureau and search
for her letter to The New Monthly. A beautifully composed missive in her best
long hand, she recalled. A vitriolic letter, responding with vigour, putting them
straight. She could remember that much, but the rest of her words were a fog. Try
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Crannóg 20
as she might, her recall was poor, her memory dim. Had she really told them she
wasn’t finished or dead but working at a library in Slough? Had she really walked
all the way to the post office in the rain and placed the letter in the gloved hand
of the post mistress?
Mrs H reached the bureau in stockinged feet and found the unopened letter
on the desk. With fumbling fingers she tore open the seal but when she peered at
the parchment, the page was blank.
As Mrs H’s breath became shallow, she remembered that her husband, the
Captain, had once written to her brother: “Dear Henrietta has such a young
enthusiastic nature and I wish her the best. My fear is that one day her dreams of
happiness will be overtaken by sad realities”. Mrs H had disagreed with this
sentiment at the time, thinking she would write forever and be happy, but she now
felt that perhaps the Captain had seen something she had been unable to see.
Mrs H lifted her head and gazed towards the pile of books neatly stacked in
the open trunk as her light began to fade. The first editions of all twenty volumes
were there, in pristine condition in the main, permanently borrowed from libraries
over the years. Some of the cheap editions, without plates, were still in the library.
She fleetingly wondered if she would have the strength to go back into work and
bring the final few copies home.
Mrs H shook her head almost imperceptibly, smiled and sighed. Her soul was
poetic, but it was not a hardy one and it neglected to follow what star it had. Perhaps they
were right, but Mrs H didn’t think so. She could no longer focus on the top cover
title but she knew what it said: POEMS BY MRS HENRIETTA HENNING
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, cloth edition 2s. 6d.
16
spring 2009
CORNER HOUSE
SANDRA BUNTING
M
ichael and Paul climbed over the wall of the orchard, the pockets of
their short trousers bursting with apples. This was the end of their
daily route during the summer holidays. They met each morning at
the top of the street and crossed the big road that led them out of the familiar
rows of city-centre terraced houses, and over to the canal where they threw rocks
at pigeons and floated pieces of wood to race. Dogs followed them, the usual
entourage of a Collie, a Labrador, a mixed Greyhound-Wolfhound and a weird
little terrier. Michael’s cat sometimes followed as well but it usually slunk off into
the bushes by itself somewhere along the way to chase birds or other small
animals.
“We were lucky there, Paul,” said Michael, the smaller of the two, struggling to
catch his breath. “I think ‘yer man’ was waiting for us. He’s cottoned on to when
we’re going to show up, We have to change our schedule.”
He sat down on the pavement.
“Perhaps we should give it a rest for awhile. They say old Fletcher’s a mean
bastard. I wouldn’t like to be at his mercy.”
“Sure, we’re not going to get caught. We just have to be smarter. It wouldn’t be
any fun if he just invited us into the orchard. ‘Help yourself to as many apples as
you like lads,” he mimicked. “What fun is there in that?”
“They say there’s a holy well in there and if you drink from it, good things
happen to you.”
“What would you want with something like that? Don’t we have to make our
own way in the world, same as anyone else?”
“I only thought…with my ma being sick….”
“Sure she’s going to be fine.”
Strains of ‘The West’s Awake’ rose up and they knew the postman would soon
be rounding the corner on his bike. The retinue of dogs, who had earlier deserted
the boys for a more interesting expedition, followed at his heels, barking a little
out of tune.
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Crannóg 20
“How are ya, lads? Fine day today.”
The postman said the same thing everyday. It could be lashing rain, a gale
force wind or hailstones falling all around, the postman always had a smile.
‘…that Connacht lies in slumber deep.
But, hark! a voice like thunder spake,
The West's awake! The West's awake!’
Paul and Michael followed him to the end of the street where a group of men
and older boys were leaning against the corner house talking.
“How are ya lads?” called the postman, to which the men nodded.
The two boys went around to the back of the houses and searched in the long
grass for a football they had left behind. They gave it a few kicks, ran back to
where the men were standing and practiced against the wall of the opposite house
until the older boys joined in and they had the makings of a match. Cars always
gave priority to games on the street.
“How’s yer ma?” asked one of the big boys. Michael shrugged. He knew he
didn’t need to answer. Nothing could happen on the street that wasn’t common
knowledge.
The men disappeared from the pavement all of a sudden. The older boys, too,
tried to make a getaway but were too slow. A large man with white hair appeared
in front of them and consulted a notebook.
“I can’t believe there is no-one at home in any of these houses. Don’t they
have work to do, children to mind?”
One of the older boys winked at Michael and Paul and they took off through
the lane to warn the other houses.
“The bishop’s man is here to collect for the new church again,” they
whispered.
Neighbours, sitting out to catch a few rays of sunshine before turning to their
chores again, gathered up their chairs. Those stopping to share news hurried on
their way. No one ventured out until they were certain the danger had passed.
“I’d rather give any extra I had to the Caseys who are having a hard time of it,
with Mary so sick,” commented an elderly women, who had a shop in the front
room of her house.
Michael’s father had wanted him to go out to the country to stay with his
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spring 2009
elderly grandfather and help on the farm. Paul’s mother, however, offered to keep
him with them. ‘Well as long as you don’t keep running home and bothering your
mother,” his father warned.
The next morning Michael was reluctant to climb over the wall into the
orchard.
“The old man will surely be waiting for us,” he said.
“But we have to. We have to get water from the holy well to make your mother
better.”
Paul didn’t tell Michael that he had filled a small jar with water from the tap at
home, closed the top on tight and put it in the pocket of his short trousers. While
Michael held back, Paul hoisted himself up on the wall and jumped into the
forbidden orchard.
“I caught you this time you little f----er. You’ll pay your way now for all you’ve
pilfered.”
Michael waited near the wall for ages. When his friend failed to turn up, he
wandered down to the corner to stand with the men.
“Where’s your little friend?” they asked.
“Caught by old man Fletcher in the orchard.”
The men shook their heads.
“Not good,” they said. “He’s a right bastard.”
Michael gave a little shudder.
Just before dinnertime, Paul came walking down the street. Michael ran up to
him.
“I thought you were a gonner,” he said.
“He’s not so bad. He just put me to work is all. Look. He gave me this.” He
held out a basket of apples. “Apple tart tomorrow, or what?” And then he slapped
his head as if he had just remembered something. “And I got some water out of
that holy well you were talking about.”
Michael didn’t know if it was the water that made his mother better but she
improved rapidly not long after drinking it. Paul just winked. Soon Michael moved
back to his own home.
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Crannóg 20
***
Strong afternoon sun hit the wall of the corner house, which also served as
protection against the wind. Michael, half dozing, adjusted his hat and looked up
towards the old orchard, now a distillery. A few of the other men joined him as
they finished their shifts. Younger lads played on the streets with their skateboards
or kicked a soccer ball.
“What do you think of the new ones?” Michael asked, patting the wall.
“Ah sure they’re nice enough,” said the man next to him. “The kids are driving
them demented though. Breaking their flowerpots. Knocking on their windows.
Throwing their ball into the back garden.”
After going home for their dinner, the men gathered again that night. In the
middle of a smoke and chat, they heard a door fling open and heavy footsteps
coming towards them.
“I told you kids before……” shouted a neatly dressed man in his early thirties.
The group of heavy-set middle-aged men looked up at him in astonishment.
“I’m sorry. I thought it was kids. We’ve been having trouble.”
The men didn’t say a word. They just threw their cigarettes down on the
pavement, pulled down their caps and ambled off.
***
For years no one leaned against the wall of the corner house. The men didn’t
do it out of respect for the new owners, James and Michelle Horan and the
children who had tormented them, had grown up. Neighbours would nod to the
couple on the street and grew to like and depend on their presence. James
organised committees to go to city hall to stop the encroachment of business
threatening the residential nature of the community. There was always something
to fight.
Not everything he did, appealed to the neighbours! He raised money and put a
bench in the small green area at the end of one terraces. A bunch of winos
claimed it immediately and kept people up in the nearby houses for nights. The
bench had to be removed.
20
spring 2009
James applied for a grant for a Heritage Study of the area so its ‘unique’
history would be preserved. It was launched at the local pub with many invited
dignitaries.
“Thousands of euro for this?” one of the men remarked. “Sure all he had to
do was ask old Tommy Brandan.”
“I wouldn’t pass up a pint of Guinness and a few sandwiches.”
“But aren’t we paying for them, having to listen to them speeches?”
“Ah sure, we can just lose ourselves in the corner.”
Then there was the huge meeting about the site at the top of the road. The
whiskey distillery had become a woollen mill giving employment again to many of
the local men and women. The mill finally closed its doors and moved to the
outskirts of the city. There were several proposals for the old site. One was for
apartment units, another for a hotel and one for a shopping centre.
James Horan started the discussion. ‘We have the right to say what we want in
our community.”
“If only he knew what it was like before,’ Michael whispered. “Rows and rows
of apple trees. Blossoms in spring. Fruit in summer. The holy well.”
At the end of the meeting James announced that he would be away for a year
doing consultancy work in Africa.
“I’ll hand everything over to you,” he said. “I’m going to rent out my house.
But I’ll be back. This is my home.”
Michael watched as cleaners and decorators came to do up the Horan house.
Some of the local lads helped Michelle put boxes up in the attic and another with
a tall ladder was hired to cut the ivy, clean out the gutters and give the windows a
scrub. Many in the street came to wave goodbye to James and Michelle as they
drove away in a luggage-packed taxi to the airport on the first leg of their journey
to Africa.
***
The factory was torn down to make way for a hotel. Some of the neighbours
were happy.
“They’re putting in a leisure centre. We can go for a swim, have a massage.”
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Crannóg 20
‘And do you think it won’t cost you?”
Others were bitter that they no longer had jobs. They were hoping the hotel
would take them on.
A cigarette was passed around. Out of the breeze, the warm sun streamed
once again onto the men who lined the wall of the corner house. Michael looked
up to the top of the road. When he squinted, by trick of the sun, he could almost
see the apple trees, the way things used to be. He felt an itch on his back and
rubbed it against the rough stone of the wall. ‘Nice of the Horans to clear the
ivy,’ he thought.
A bicycle that had been racing down the street suddenly screeched to a halt.
“How are you lads?” the driver nodded. “Still daydreaming, Michael?”
“By the Jaysus, I was just thinking of the time you got caught by old man
Fletcher. How long are you home for?”
“Ach, the marriage broke up in Australia. Thought I’d come home for a while.
Spend some time with the old ones.”
Paul lay the bike down on the curb and leaned his back against the wall with
the rest of the men.
“God, that feels good. Twenty years since I’ve done that, lads,” he sighed. He
took a few notes from his pocket. “This is great. Standing here and doing nothing!
How much is the membership, lads? I’m back.”
“We all are,’ said Michael. “We’re all back.”
22
spring 2009
GRAVESTRIPS IN SICHUAN PROVINCE,
WEST CHINA
Along the edges of the fields the gravestrips,
with their headstones marking final destination,
journey's end. And from this speeding train
each strip appears a moment only, then
is whipped away-- apt metaphor for life,
for these straw-hatted men and women bending
to the clay. Remember Kavanagh,
who couldn't think his mother buried in that
Monaghan graveyard but was always with him
walking along a headland of green oats
in June? These workers toil beside their elders
always with them too, reminding them
that the earth is God, or near as makes no difference,
and each of us allowed a moment only,
one quick glimpse before we're sped away.
23
EAMON LYNSKEY
Crannóg 20
AT THE BOTTOM OF TAYLOR'S HILL
Accents drift on coffee scents:
across the road, the pinched, sallow face
of the bookshop assistant will be smiling tiredly.
I have walked by a surfeit of green
over and down affluent hills
past trees that were a dead end.
It is as if they have had
too long a prospect of the sad stone
masts wearing down in the bay;
summers have become too great
a sameness of change. Growth nestles round
their roots like a coiled hearthside cat.
Unending saline twilights
have sapped the space between blue
iris and the nascent spark of awe.
What matter if life is stabbed
conception or the planned thrust
of fable? The trees like any drunk
are seeking their own oblivion,
their roots are a putting down
in nothing more than shifting
faith. What if nothing will part?
Or nothing grip? There is but the sway
of nullity. Hold fast, hold fast:
we are our own hanging on.
24
TED MCCARTHY
spring 2009
ON SEEING JIM AND NORA ON THE
BEACH AT AGIA GALINI, CRETE
They drifted back from the beach bar
where we’d seen them earlier sharing a frappé,
he had the same dark spectacles perched,
his hair slicked back, the moustache neatly trimmed,
Nora looking Junoesque wrapped in a swirling towel.
He held the sun-bed attentively for her
until she sank into it, the full of her,
her kiss strangely red, touching him there
and there. He was reading a Grisham novel, I think,
when the incident occurred, the boombox
far too loud, the teenagers deaf to his plea
for quiet, the bleached kid with the razor-cut
giving him the finger.
But, none of us
were prepared for what happened next, Jim
assuming the fireplace pose, left arm resting,
right thumb hooked into his beachwear as he launched
into ‘Those Lovely Seaside Girls’, his tenor
matching the scratching beats, his voice growing,
arms expanding to the full-power notes,
the boom-box drowned as in a wave,
all the sun-tanned masses stilled,
transfixed by his final cut-glass thrill,
Nora’s whispered, ‘That’s my Jim’.
25
JAMES MARTYN
Crannóg 20
THE GARDEN NEXT DOOR
CHRISTIAN WARD
Locked, strung
with pollens, stirred by bees.
Cicadas burn
their fine blue current.
Two paths cross at the centre:
a ring of impatiens.
Their white petals lift to the air
as if waiting for the next departure
of summer.
The paths lead outward
to a red brick border,
A perfect circle squared.
On the grey wall of the house
a thin broom slants,
the air around it furious.
The dim outline of the woman,
the recent flutter of hands.
26
spring 2009
MURDER IN THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN
DAVID STARKEY
Spring morning. California sun shining
on a sheltered spot. Who is this lying
chest down in the milkweed and lantana?
A man, or a woman? Drab clothes reveal
nothing. As a distant gardener makes his rounds,
the thousand butterflies—mourning cloaks
and checkerspots, swallowtails and buckeyes—
ignore everything their long curling tongues
don’t find sweet. A painted lady lands
on a strand of hair matted with dried blood,
tastes, then flits off for black-eyed Susan
and goldenrod. A phaon crescent alights
on a shoe heel, looks as though it may stay,
but a warm breeze ripples the fescue grass,
and the entire field erupts in a blush
of ocher and amber, cochineal
and chrysolite, hyacinth and indigo.
Briefly, everything vibrant disappears.
27
Crannóg 20
BENEATH A LIFETIME OF NODDING
T
BENJAMIN ROBINSON
hey slump into the cleft of the slab together, huddling against the cold,
against the embers.
“We’re reaching the end of our tether.”
“And it’s only the middle of the night.”
“The unfathomable midriff, the treacherous incubus. We’ll have to turn round
and go back. Is someone in charge still? Keeping track of our comings and
goings? Checking for symptoms, analysing our U-turns for signs of perfection?”
“Do I not have that air about me? The weighty countenance, a visage rutted
with clout.”
“Ah yes, your say-so. Still in working order, I hope, along with your go ahead?”
“Beneath a lifetime of nodding, I soldier on. I’m required in various matters
still, none without import. I rang far and wide, gathering them in, putting them
under.”
“Over the edge till the abyss is replete. We’ll be the last, the finishing touches.”
“Our fingers tacky as reputations. They keep us in reserve, in case of
collapses. Cave-ins and the like, shoulder the subjects back into the pits. Pack it in
with a vengeance. Leave no room for doubt.”
“Under the canopy, faint and grey, the old spade sings the earth, prolific.”
“It hums the fruits of our labours.”
“In and out of tune they poke, through the shrunken afterglow of retort.”
“It’s all they know, the exhilaration, the poke, the retort. Round and round we
go, you and I and the devil knows what—our delivery, our charge.”
“It’s almost like birth, the way they struggle.”
“Cutting the ribbon, making ends part.”
“Separating the possessions from the belongings.”
“I cried the first time, salty tears of panic.”
“Are you not fed up yet?”
“Is that still permitted? To be stuffed to the gills with a cavernous bilge. But
we do all our best work when our palates are jaded. It swells like an affliction, but
to us it feels like music.”
28
spring 2009
“The old incision, dawn after dawn. Slicing the entities, the knots paper thin,
loosened and slackened.”
“They encourage thin slices, it promotes a vigorous engagement. They want it
in deep, in the tissue of things—digging themselves out with their scabrous
fingers. Revision is a thing of dread. We’re suitable fixated. They must have seen
something in us at the time of our application. A hidden talent for attachment.”
“A structural affinity, a spherical empathy. Do you remember when we began,
working our way through the shallows to that first assignment?”
“All the longings we took for peaks, promises, warm and unbroken, crushed
underfoot as we progressed.”
“We progressed over water. Thinking it was progress, thinking it was water.”
“A watery progression.”
“A sluggish liquidity. When all along it was eggshells we were walking on. In
search of conclusions. Dry land, you kept calling it. Journeys end. Hauling
ourselves out, dragged by the lapels. I can’t remember, some sort of rescue.”
“I saw it many times, swaying into my field of vision. A rudiment on the
horizon. The eye is drawn to the horizontal; it seeks naturally the soporific, what
will lay it to rest, rescue it from lucidity.”
“Sounds ineffable.”
“From a wellspring of hindrance and impediment we sprang. Glimmers of
hope.”
“Through the promises of land. From waters edge to waters edge.”
“Where they sing of what remains, in ignorance of their departure.”
“A refrain of words forgotten. All it’s living, forbidden and unbidden.”
“A hymn to the impenetrable. Their dream of a world without blemish.”
“We’re evoking things again.”
“Wombs, they tell me, are off limits.”
“It’s getting colder, the job needs doing.”
Up on the slab, the sacking snaps and flutters at the ends of its moorings.
Tattered sails tugging at the wind, threadbare wings clawing at release. Throwing
into the air sheaves of random gestures, dislocated syllables and clusters of
broken sighs. Shrunken flames sinking in and out of sight as they rise, stiffened,
from the ground and stand with their backs to the sky. The bright blade unhinged
again catches an exchange of glances, thrown back and forth, alighting on the wad
29
Crannóg 20
of tangles. Spreading their fingers gently out they feel across the surface, as if for
a pulse, for a life within the strictures, the ellipses and hardened arcs. The mesh
surges beneath their tips, the patterns falling in and out of coherence, clashing,
overlapping, resting in loops and crevices, in one another's flow. Rising and falling
like light across a landscape.
The wind swirls and churns a little stronger, snapping the ends back on
themselves, throwing them more violently at the air. The recoil echoes through
their palms, stalled in crosses above the knots, darkened bulbs of constraint. The
fabric's hem, ridged in a shielding crease, deadens and muffles the signal. Faintly it
penetrates the skin, imparting its imprint, its utterance.
"Here," one of them whispers, "have a feel."
His eyes flicker beneath a veil of fatigue as he slips his fingers under the
upturned trough of knots, the warm encrusted threshold, and murmurs, "Yes,
there's something there, I can't quite make it out."
"Have you ever felt anything like it before?"
"In my professional opinion, my life, my youth?" He shrugs. “It felt a bit like
rain."
"That’s what I thought. A certain precipitous inevitability, something from the
heavens falling back upon the earth. The damp descent, the pitter-patter, a
reservoir of indescribable fluidity. How would you say it moves, its internal
rhythm, how does it go?"
“It moves like a torrent, goes like blood, flowing underground into a
concentration."
"I imagine it moves like ooze, an ooze of everything, viscous and black,
flecked with earth tones seeking ventilation, seeping beneath the lids, an
outpouring of aggregate."
"It begins to formulate itself, sweeping everything aside, everything in its path,
including itself, including the path."
"Everything they tried to forbid. I think we should call a halt."
"I'll mark the spot. Any preferences, suggestions?"
"What about an X—just this once?"
"An X it is. When they ask how the spot is marked, we can tell them it’s
marked with an X."
30
spring 2009
OF ARMS
NOEL SLOBODA
Glancing at the quiet girl in the front
who ought to be listening but cannot
resist deciphering her own hieroglyphics
with a black tipped nail,
I hope she–not someone else–made all
the cuts on those delicately sculpted arms
covered in golden down, arms that I like
to think might never have been wrapped
around another, or caressed,
as I chant another Romantic ode,
imagine her story−the indifferent step dad
misunderstanding her scribbling, driving her
to hurt herself−and the boys in back
eye her and doodle grotesqueries, grin
as though they read secret passwords on her limbs,
and I grasp how hard it will be to master
writing and reading, theory and practice.
31
Crannóg 20
APPROACHING TULLAMORE
BRID FITZPATRICK
A flash of birds
steering to the sky
from plough barren
fields.
The grey gulls
melting into the
tree-fingered air.
And now a blotchy
castle steeps to
view
gaping to the train.
Its walls oozing
ivy green.
Normans too have
blended like the
gulls into an
Irish sky.
32
spring 2009
A WILD CAT’S BUFFET
NIAMH BOYCE
N
o one got up, she showed herself in. “So Maria’s come home to
roost…” I whispered. My husband and I cradled our brandies and
watched. Maria was beautiful still, but swamped by such lengths of
velvet, that a roll of low laughter unwound all the way to the back of the smoky
room. I smiled too, until I saw my husband’s expression.
She convinced no one, with her squished face crouched in close for a match
and that husky voice, pouring forth cigarette smoke, and lies. Trying to write new
memories. Convinced no one, with those copper ringlets like greasy party
sausages strung from the top of her head. She tried too hard, hopped from Billy
to Jack. What’d she been up to anyway, while the rest of us got nicely married?
I touched his knee. He hadn’t heard a word. Despite my long-lasting lip-gloss
and naked shoulders, I was invisible. See Ron, he liked to talk to men. With me,
he just drank his pint. It was tiring, all this trying. “Isn’t she some ticket?” He
beamed, called her back over with a wave. That tore me. Like he was the magician
and I was some girl he’d cut in half but never noticed, never stopped his smiling
and nodding to the crowd as I screamed. I told him this. He said I needed to see
someone, a doctor I supposed, not some ticket. Maybe I did.
Ron and I were two very different people. He bought us goats and chickens
for me to rear and I listened to him play at sessions, but I wasn’t arty like his old
friends. I‘d a stiff childhood. Years of rules; early nights, weekday chores, visiting
relatives, avoiding sin, silent dinners and scary nuns. All culminating in a
secretarial course and off I flew to my little job for life.
I was distrustful of Ron’s intentions at first. Work friends gave me a make over
for the fleadh. He asked me to dance. Disguised in borrowed clothes and brave
colours, I said yes. My eyes itched under the charcoal makeup. He was handsome
enough to make me cautious. Resembled those lads from school who looked past
me. Gregarious, I suppose they call it. My last ditch effort in some other girl’s
clothes. Was that what he fell for? Back then I was so grateful I didn’t ask. It
meant life had finally begun. Marriage was a relief; I knew what the rules were
33
Crannóg 20
again.
But what then? In those days we didn’t have to be sexy for very long past
twenty. Life became predictable. We were comfortable. Exhausted from work he
started to fall asleep in front of the TV. I’d listen from our bed and drift off when
he began to snore. I’d wake to the morning cartoons hooting up from the living
room. As lonely as a child again, I found a pup. In work, the girls threw their eyes
up and sighed, “Men!” As if they knew exactly what I was talking about. So this
must be normal I thought. I took comfort in that and smothered my yearning for
some way different. Ron didn’t want children, we’re enough for each other, he
said. So I tried to put that aside. It wasn’t easy. We’ll see he said. Milly was my
child, a bichon frise with brown eyes and pure white hair. The poor little bitch
yelped every time he beat that bodhran.
Yes, I was expecting Maria or someone like her. Your worst fears come. You
draw them on you. Just by having them. The October skies poured. I couldn’t
sleep for fretting. Suspicion, a tinker’s itch. Then it started for real. He’d smile,
close his eyes and I couldn’t get in. I wanted to sledgehammer that feeling from
him. I’d no power, didn’t know where it went or when I lost it, but I did. I took
note of his every move and expression but I never discussed it with him. “I won’t
give it air, it will burn brighter then. I won’t ask.”
My Ron wasn’t from here. He didn’t know a wolf from a lamb. It drove me
crazy not knowing where they met, how long it was going on, had they done it
yet. I was reduced to that. A decent woman wouldn’t want to know. It tormented
me though. Drove me mad. I heard rumours, but she was too old for that now, we
both were.
Then I saw them, caught sight of her car despite the dark and the lashing rain.
I was on my way to town with goatskins and a rim, to surprise him, to keep him.
The bodhran maker was to help me put it all together in time for his birthday, a
surprise. I turned around and followed them. They were driving fast in her white
Renault. It took no stretch of the imagination to see inside that car. Maria tossing
her hair, flirting. A cigarette burning low between her coral finger nails. She’s too
happy to feel the ash falling to her lap, singeing tiny moons across her black
thighs. A skirt hoisted high as if she were paddling the cold sea instead of rowing
Ron further and further away from me.
34
spring 2009
I put my fist on the horn and left it there as I ate up the miles. She picked up
speed. I’d never driven as fast before. My own husband was disappearing round
corners on me. Only that morning our bodies had shared the same heat. I wasn’t
going to lose him now. Not to that. Did Maria know what it was like to be a spy in
your own marriage?
Her father reared them, maybe that was it. That she’d no mother to teach her
manners, to end up laughing at the bar with the men and horsing beer. Left to
their own devices, her and those two sisters. They had nothing but every freedom
I never had. Thieves. They raided Leary’s front room. Opened the presents while
the wedding party picnicked from a pool table, Blue Nun and ham sandwiches.
Hanging about at all hours. My mother handed them out bread and jam once.
“Run them mammy” I begged, “run them!”
They turned off the main road. Up a muck lane and now there was no sign
of them. They must’ve been driving at a fierce rate. I raced on till I glimpsed the
white roof of her car. Dripping oaks guarded the gateless entrance. I swung
towards the flooded driveway and crashed into a cement pillar from nowhere. The
witch.
The ditches frothed with muck in the downpour. It was as if the countryside
was awash with porter. I climbed from the warmth, jamming the goatskin to my
unhinged jaw. Though sheets of rain rinsed me, I felt no pain. Craters brimming
with greasy pools paved the way to the Renault. The bonnet curled around a
thick oak. The car was anchored there like a gleaming boat. I peered in. A
calamity of fur and pearled limbs were moon lit and distorted behind the clouded
glass. Maria was slumped sideways. The puddles circled incessantly around my feet
suckling falling drops. I banged the heel of my hand on the glass. I saw mascara
run like watery coal down my face. Where the hell was my husband? The car
doors were jammed. I couldn’t make the damn handle budge. There was no sign
that Ron had ever been here. Piled high on the passenger seat were bin bags of
clothes that spilt over onto the dead woman’s lap. Scarves with little coins sown in
rows. Sheer skirts of gaudy colours like magenta and peacock blue. I stood there
getting drenched though. What had I been chasing. Had any of it been real?
There was nothing to do but enter her unlocked house. I sat by the empty
grate, surveying the place. The black-bottomed pans on the draining board. The
35
Crannóg 20
scabs running across her lino. On the mantle lay a dream book. It was withered
ochre. Every page was smoke infused and sealed with grease of use. It smelt of
mean fires on damp days. I searched it. “Death”, it said, “is a good sign”.
I was lost in this house with its wide hall and too many doors. Whispers
drizzled over me. When I found my voice I asked the dark. Is he coming?
Maria leaned in the doorway.
“You won’t see him here.”
Trespassing again. She never knew her place. Well, she’s not getting in. Not
coming here. I stood to block her way but she walked through me. I stumbled
back into the chair. She leant over me, close and attentive, like a malevolent
nursing mother. Feathers formed a black garland around her bloodied breasts.
Her neck, it was broken.
“You like?” She traced a quill across her collarbone.
I feigned indifference, sickened.
“Crow feathers from a wild cat’s buffet!” Maria crowed, puffing out her boa.
”Did you think you were well rid?”
“I care not a whit. You don’t exist.”
“You hate too well Angie.” She whispered.
I stayed under my goatskin by the dead fireplace as the rain overflowed into
the blue barrel outside. The gutters coursed like a river. She was only one of three
dirty sisters but Maria held on, tugging my hair.
“Do you want to know?”
“No.”
“Did you quiz him?”
“No. Not me.”
“If you alone possessed every fumble, kiss, stolen caress…”
“Stop.”
“… would you be a happy woman. Would you rest?”
“Yes.”
“Ha!”
I felt derelict. Had done for the longest time.
“Am I your worst nightmare, wife. The likes of me ripping it up in velvet, fur
and face paint at my age…was it a relief when I stopped breathing air? It’s more
36
spring 2009
than air sustains a person. You know that now.”
She pinched my flesh, covered me in nips.
“You yearned for betrayal, relished the torment.”
Mother of Mercies, our love, our sweetness and our hope. When will she
leave, she is flesh incarnate.
“You loved your role as wronged wife. You’ve been practising for it all your
life.”
“No.”
She ignored me.
“No. I love him. And I’m the one who’ll have him now.”
It was if I hadn’t spoken. She leaned in, dripped her voice over mine and
cancelled me out. Pointed towards the window, making me look. A car crushed
against the pillar, a woman dead at the wheel. The sight of my own bloodied fair
hair washed vision from me.
We curled up. Tugged the hide round us. I shivered relentlessly under my relic
of grander plans. This skin I’d hoped to stretch over a green ash rim. The music
had left us all. Maria droned on, her eyes jaded. “Angie,” she told me, “you’re ten
years old looking at a cow being torn and a calf being born. Listen hard enough
and the dead will tell you themselves, take heed, take advice; it’s the bread and
butter of life. I’ll show you the way. I’m not a vindictive woman. I’ll show you the
way.”
37
Crannóg 20
SELF-STORAGE
JARLATH FAHY
i went to the self- storage centre
just to put myself away
for an afternoon a night and a morning
and collect myself the next day
two skeletons were on the door
wearing monocles and plus fours
they put me in a black plastic box
with silver chains and silver locks
they shut the locks and threw away the key
and we’ll see you tomorrow at half past three
was it lonely without me
not at all
the world was so big and i was so small
everything was smellier noisier brighter
there was no need for aggro
my heart couldn’t have been lighter
but one can only take so much of heaven
and eternity takes far too long
i missed my old self
like a favorite jumper or
an old familiar song
i camped out over night
with many more
it was like a U2 concert at the
self -storage centre door
we lit candles and sang
we shall overcome
38
spring 2009
when three o’clock
like a school bell rang
the self storage centre doors
opened with a clang
mandela didn’t hear such cheers
we greeted ourselves
like old friends we hadn’t met in years
39
Crannóg 20
POLKA
CLARE SAWTELL
I don’t remember
your back to the light but I can hear the soft
rumble see your hands guiding the fabric
feeding it to the needle pins in your mouth,
pausing to re-thread.
Did I choose the dots? They were
lemon tangerine lime, Smarties on midnight blue,
first long dress for the first dance.
And the pattern, was that your call?
- Vogue, Simplicity – or did we choose together,
heaving the books across the counter?
In the photo there’s a sleeve, slightly
puffed, and the hint of a neckline.
Mostly I remember your hands
guiding the cloth.
40
spring 2009
HORSES
LIBBY HART
I know nothing of horses, but their beauty
as they move down to the riverbank.
Of how their noses lead the way
in a bobbing up and down measure
to get their legs working.
Manes fall like enormous ribbons
and tails are nothing less than wild thought.
Each splendid quiver rids their glance of flies.
And marked by diamonds at forehead,
each is like a fortune teller's secret
with nostrils as big as caves.
The meat of them, so rounded like a bundled baby
yet the swell at knee is as arthritic as an old man's.
Even so, they move confidently over loose stone.
It's as if they carry the largest of souls, the river's knowledge.
A mighty silence just before the wind picks up.
41
Crannóg 20
MEMOIR WITH GRYKES AND
TURLOUGHS (EXCERPT)
A
PATRICIA BURKE BROGAN
Amsterdam
s our plane descends towards Schiphol Airport, the landscape
resembles a Waggemaker painting, shapes of bronze-umber in basrelief now softened by rain.
This is my first time in Continental Europe. As we pass through customs, I’m
amazed to see armed airport police watching from a balcony.
Two women from The Long Walk in Galway City greet us as we gather our
luggage and move towards the taxi rank.
‘We’re on our way to Switzerland!’
‘Have a wonderful trip. We’ll see you at the Galway Races!’ I reply.
Ten days earlier, our travel agents had contacted us to say that our chosen
Museum Hotel was not available, but that they had booked another, which was
very central. Rather than cancel our trip, we accepted.
Next morning, carrying easel, canvases and paint-box, we walk from our
hotel, which is close to Dam Square. We turn left and move through a narrow
cobbled side-street towards the canals.
‘Here? -- Oh, no!’
‘Here? ---- No! No!’
I stop suddenly.
‘It’s quiet here, Eamonn. Look at those colours, those shapes, tones!’
‘Are you sure? But, why are those shop-fronts closed?’
‘It’s just right!’ I make visual notes with my hands.
Eamonn sets up easel and canvas, unfolds my small painting-stool.
I open my paint-box with acrylic paints for quick drying.
‘All set now? Slán. Back in an hour, love.’
‘Go raibh míle maith agat. See you for lunch, a stór.’
We like to speak Gaelic when we are abroad.
On the water below, barges full of tourists pass under curved bridges
42
spring 2009
overshadowed by tightly-packed-together tall narrow houses.
Clatter of trams, distant hum of city-life is punctuated by shrillness of bicycle
bells.
I choose earth colours for my palette. Even the shadows are warm, reflections
in the canal waters are warm too, except for small areas of sky-water.
I half-close my eyes.
With knife and brush I mix yellow ochres, burnt siennas, raw umbers with a
little alizarin; curve of bridges, texture of buildings, mirror-images, a concerto of
colours.
I work quickly. Brushes, knife, paints, fingers, looking out intensely, looking
back at canvas, set up compositions, more gamboge, less crimson, scrape off
paint here. Dab on, scratch with fingernail. Smooth. I use details on one area,
letting the eye imagine the rest.
Eamonn brings coffee and cheese. Still immersed in and excited by the
cityscape, we lunch silently.
‘The organ-grinder should be playing in the Kalverstraat this afternoon. I
might take some pictures. Back before six, love.’
Cameras across his shoulder, cigarette in hand, he moves away towards Dam
Square.
Shadows under the bridges deepen and I push more ultramarine on to my
palette.
More burnt umber, more sienna, indigo, a touch of viridian.
To focus on a bell-tower I change my position and try to catch the glow of
fading light.
Shadows lengthen and I work faster.
Suddenly, hands on my shoulders make me jump. A man speaks in a language
I do not understand. The peculiar expression in his eyes and his sleazy gestures
make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I snap shut my paint-box, grab
hold of my canvases and easel and, dropping my brushes on cobbles, run to our
hotel.
Grykes in Burren limestone grow sharper and darker.
‘I shouldn’t have left you alone, my love. There, there, you’re safe now. Tomorrow we’ll visit the house of Rembrandt,’ Eamonn comforts me.
43
Crannóg 20
Later that evening we join a sight-seeing group.
We listen to the guide as she relates the history of the Royal Palace in Dam
Square and then we move to the Diamond Centre.
It’s getting dark as we walk down a side-street towards the canals.
‘This street! Is it? Doesn’t it look familiar, Eamonn?
I take his hand in mine and move closer.
‘Yes, it’s the same street, love, but now the shop-fronts are open.’
‘This is our famous Red Light District’, our guide announces.
In each neon-lit window a woman poses. Some sit or stand doll-like, others
move slowly to loud music. We stop and stare as cruising men ask questions or
bargain with the window-women, then a few walk through the chosen doorway.
Others move on.
‘It’s the oldest profession. A variety of women to suit all tastes,’ says our guide.
An argument erupts between a young window-woman and a sailor.
‘Get lost! I don’t do S. and M.,’ she shouts as he slinks away towards another
window and goes through the doorway. The curtain closes.
‘That’s an Irish accent,’ Eamonn remarks.
‘Her pimp will beat that woman up. That’s why some women have bruised
faces,’ our guide explains’
‘But why do they stay on here?’ another Irish voice echoes along the street.
‘Money for drugs. Most of the women are now addicted to drugs.’
The colours in my mindscape have now changed to purples, magentas,
aubergines.
Grykes in Burren limestone grow deeper and darker.
Cyclists push pedals over cobbled streets as we make our way to
Rembrandthuis.
In Rembrandt’s darkened studio, we see his etching press and special copper
plates.
I stand at the window, where he worked with etching needles.
‘Look, Eamonn, this is Rembrandt’s burin and this is his burnisher! He held
these tools in his hands. His spirit is here, is still here. He could have sat on this
chair as he worked on that silverpoint of his beloved Saskia.’
‘Or his Prodigal Son, his Christ Preaching which he reworked so many times,’
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the caretaker adds.
Shelves hold supplies of his resin, waxes, inks and his acid-baths..
‘Master of chiaroscuro,’ I whisper.
‘He wanted to be the best and he was the best,’ a Dutch voice adds.
‘His special method of gradually treating and finishing his etched plates will
never be known. The invention was buried with him. Buried in an unmarked
pauper’s grave, but now the grave of Rembrandt, one of the greatest artists of all
time, has been rediscovered in Westerkirk,’ the caretaker announces.
‘We’ll take a tram to Westerkirk to-morrow,’ Eamonn takes my hand.
‘Shouldn’t we see his great paintings first and then visit his grave?’
In the Rijksmuseum I sit, shoeless, on the floor for hours and hours.
I’m entranced by the major works of Rembrandt, by his Self Portraits which
show him as libertine, as suffering man and as ageing master. Magnificent!
‘We must come back to the Vermeers after we visit Westerkirk,’ my voice is
choked with emotion as we drink white wine in the outside café.
Another day at special exhibitions in the Stedelijk Museum, I again sit,
shoeless, on the floor all day and absorb the Abstract Expressionists’ world of
colour, vitality.
De Kooning, Kokoschka, Jasper Johns, Rothko.
I fall in love with ‘Portrait of a Pierrot’ by Rouault.
In the bar of the Krasnapolski Hotel in Dam Square, we chat about Dutch art
with Tom, our tall, sad-eyed barman.
‘Our usual Amstel beers, Tom, please.’ Eamonn orders.
‘We’re going to try Indonesian to-night.’ I add.
As Tom serves us, a silver-haired, fine-boned man in a well-cut grey suit sits
beside us at the bar. He presents Tom with a ribbon-wrapped parcel.
‘From Leningrad for you and Miriam.’ They speak in Dutch for a few
moments.
We sip our cool drinks and examine street-maps.
Our Irish accents attract the stranger and he joins in conversation about the
Troubles in our country. He mentions Bernadette Devlin and Dr. Ian Paisley and
we realize that he has an extensive knowledge about breaches of human rights in
Northern Ireland.
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Crannóg 20
In a calm voice, he says, ‘I am against discrimination of every kind.’
Insisting on buying us a drink, he says, ‘Because I am old, I drink Young
Genever. You are young, so I buy you Old Genever.’
Later, he says goodnight with, ‘I fly to Basle very early to-morrow morning.’
‘Slán leat agus go n’eirigh an bóthar leat.’ We shake hands and he leaves to go
to his bedroom.
‘Do you know who that is?’ Tom is full of emotion.
With our eyes, we ask him.
‘That is the father of Anne Frank,’ Tom’s voice is hushed.
Behind a revolving bookcase were those hidden stairs to that secret annexe in Prinsengracht,
the wall-map on which he charted the advance of the Allies from Normandy.
Betrayal, Betrayal, Betrayal.
Spat on, kicked down that narrow stairs by jack-booted Gestapo.
The twisted cross of iron on hell-like trains to Auschwitz.
Separation from his wife, Edith, and from his daughters.
Anne and Margot to Bergen-Belsen.
Typhus. Gas-chambers. Death. Death. Death.
In silence, we turn and watch Otto Frank walk up the wide stairs of Hotel
Krasnapolski.
Otto Frank, only survivor from that family, died in Basle in 1980.
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spring 2009
SKINS
AIDEEN HENRY
The sea surface wrinkles like elephant skin
when viewed from an airplane.
Within hours of death, blood tracks to the underside,
to marble dependant skin.
Will the man who buys your shoes from the charity shop,
feel you coursing through him, while he walks?
Will his feet press out in new directions
to banish your wrinkles from the leather?
That I could bag and drop off thoughts of you,
though sometimes I click and scroll down,
to relive some splendid hours and days.
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Crannóg 20
A WHISPER BEHIND THE ASPEN TREES
ELEANOR HOOKER
I placed a whisper behind the aspen trees so
when the time was right the air might carry it home.
And when the time was right the aspen tress would tremble
With my whispered breath, and the sound would soak the clear
Blue lake in a cloudless light, and it would sigh look up
Look out and know the clear blue day in a cloudless light.
Long ago I planted aspen trees behind the breeze so when
lightly stroked they moaned with quivering delight,
and when the time was right a murmuring rising in the air
recalled an ancient whisper placed behind the aspen trees.
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spring 2009
NINA AND THE KESTREL
MIRIAM GALLAGHER
F
lying into the valley, scattered with cypress and olivetrees, the kestrel
glides past the monastery on the mountain before swooping down to the
lower slopes, covered with oak trees. Low on the Petalo mountainside
the village of Lamira, a spread of interspersed houses over a large area of land, is
literally covered with green. A bell rings out from the church up behind Piso
Lamira, where the white farmhouse is only a speck from the air. Far below the
bird’s flight, the riverbed, stretching along a crease in the base of the valley, lies
hidden under verdant foliage. As the kestrel crosses the valley, morning sun
catches the copper gleam of his wings, before spreading its light out along the
headland, illuminating the white coastal houses of Hora and making the sea
shimmer like a jewel. It would be hard to find a more fertile or lovelier island in
the whole of Greece.
Nina’s white farmhouse stands apart against a blue sky. On the balcony pots
of every size and shape are bursting with flowers and plants; a cascade of colour
and greenery trailing over the balcony wall down to the terraced garden cut into
the mountainside. It was love at first sight once she found the 400 yr old
farmhouse. And now it feels like home. Who knows whether he would have
chosen to live here. Right up to the end they kept searching for the perfect place,
where he could paint away to his heart’s content. However, like one of the restless
birds he loved to paint, he preferred being on the move; a few months here, a few
months there. For years the yellow Volkswagen van had served as a part time
home with Jenny wren curling up in the back with her toys, singing herself to
sleep. Later when the replacement van kept breaking down beyond repair he’d
spend a month or two on Halki, the winter in Athens. Teaching guitar and
bouzouki, and fending off art students so he could paint his birds of prey while
Nina gave cookery classes, sharing the secrets of her Cordon Bleu skills with the
wives of the Athenian diplomatic corps.
Now the fragrance of her lemon cake wafts out to the balcony from the cool,
whitewashed kitchen with three-foot walls and a dairy fresh atmosphere. This is
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Crannóg 20
her domain where among pans and skillets she concocts ambrosial dishes. But
Nina is not in her kitchen. Out in her terraced garden she waves at her Irish
guests before gathering an armful of flageolets.
‘All this beauty.’ Mairéad sighs, ‘Impossible to write.’ She’s seated under an
apple tree, staring at a blank piece of paper. Nina laughs, surveying her very own
Hanging Gardens of Babylon. ‘Apricots, plums, and strawberries love this rich
soil.’ She points to a rose bush. ‘Only planted last year and it’s sprouted two feet.’
‘Some racket!’ chuckles Donal who is sketching a view of Hora. Nina regards
her noisy chickens, pecking corn on the lower terrace. They produce eggs with
such yellow yolks that even the locals gasp. She hands him a strawberry. ‘Lunch
will be soon.’
‘When does Jenny arrive?’ asks Mairéad
‘A moveable feast – depending on the Rafina ferry.’
‘And taxi?’ prompts Donal between mouthfuls of strawberry.
Nina nods. ‘ Kostas will whizz her up in jig time.’
She can’t wait to welcome her songbird daughter, who’s training be an opera
singer in New York. Recalling how beautifully she sang to her father in his last
days, Nina sighs. Afterwards, driven by grief and emptiness, she had sensed he
wanted her to keep searching for the perfect place. And she did. People were
surprised by her determination and sceptical of the Southend fortune teller, who
predicted Nina would live in a white house surrounded by red flowers, even
correctly giving the first two letters of the village Nina now calls home.
On the balcony she passes the large tabby snoozing on the best chair. Since he
can eat for Europe she has hung bells on his collar as a warning to birds.
‘Call if you need a hand,’ Mairéad offers.
But Nina has disappeared through the French doors into the main room,
which houses some of his paintings and musical instruments. It’s wonderfully airy,
with arched recesses half way up the high walls to the carved wooden ceiling.
Despite her grief – or perhaps because of it – she had tackled the house
renovations with gusto, even persuading a local craftsman to make a corner
fireplace with a mantelpiece of 300 yr old wood. Built in the traditional island
style, the chimney is shaped like a beehive and looks like it belongs.
The other night she dreamt of a bird with coppery feathers, streaks of blue
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spring 2009
intermixed with red and brown. From the hooked beak beside her on the pillow it
was clearly a bird of prey. Strangely she felt no fear and awoke with a feeling of
peace.
Once in Halki, while fashioning a lute out of rosewood, he confided how
birds of prey had always fascinated him. As a boy climbing trees on summer
evenings, he would hide for hours high among leafy branches imitating the call of
the eagle, convincing himself that his efforts would fool the very birds
themselves. For, like Icarus, he was bursting with a passionate longing to fly. And,
despite a lack of response from the eagles of England, he pursued his passion
with twin talents of sight and sound, persisting with his birdcalls just like
Wordsworth, who blew mimic hootings to the owl. At school he made sketches
of the eagle’s beaky nose, gimlet eye and mass of feathers filling the whole page.
Gradually his stark drawings grew so lifelike that other children, producing
pictures of nice little birds like robins, were frightened.
Birds of prey were not his only passion. For what he desired from life, life
couldn’t offer. Yet he tried, how he tried, yes, every time, to get to the heart of his
passion, to pierce the core of what mattered, to satisfy his soul. Despite setbacks
of time or place. Or people. It wasn’t till later, much later, that he came to
understand, like Icarus, how flying too near the sun brings not only rapture but
the melting fire of consummation. And by then it was too late. With a heart so
full of passion, that no one life could satisfy, he was gone. Burnt out with longing
and yearning, playing classical guitar or bouzouki, Irish and Greek folk music.
Dancing the hasapico, making a lute or baglama. Fixing houses, fixing engines. Or
singing John Dowland’s, Oh, Mistress Mine to his own accompaniment on the
lute. And always painting; birds of prey, Greek papas, views of Crete or Halki or
anything that caught his fancy. And it was easy to catch his fancy. For much
appealed to him and he was far too appealing for his own good, attracting people
to him like moths to a flame. They flickered about him, unable to satisfy his
needs. In awe of his talent. As if they sensed his failure to grasp that being cursed
by so much passion - though a torment - is the curse of genius.
She resolves to start arranging his things – something she must do if she is to
put her own house in order. Perhaps when Jenny wren arrives – herself like a
singing bird of fine plumage, whose heart piercing voice makes your breath catch
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Crannóg 20
in your throat.
Taking a vase of pink roses from the back kitchen, Nina climbs the corner
stairs, painted white like the floor of the attic room. Places the vase on the
dressing table. Arranges pillows on the white bed. Its canopy of gathered net, like
a bridal veil, hangs over the brass bedstead and sides to fall softly to the floor.
Adjusting a lace curtain on the window, she shuts the little door leading to the
roof, where last year she plucked oranges from the tree overhead to make
marmalade. Before turning to go she regards her handiwork. She has made
Jenny’s room so white, so fresh, so delicate, it resembles a haven of repose for a
fairytale princess.
Nina returns to the kitchen to put the finishing touches to lunch. She has
cooked Jenny’s favourite. Spaghetti Bolognaise and lemon cake. She calls in her
Irish guests.
‘Open the wine, Donal, like the handy man you are.’
Looking at a tall painting of two Greek papas Mairéad sighs, ‘ That’s where we
met. In his studio in Crete.’
‘I seem to remember the street was called after El Greco. Or was it?’ Donal
asks.
‘You’re right.’ Nina replies. ‘He was born there.’ Mairéad laughs, ‘When we
first heard the name Theotocopoulous it sounded like the Greek word for
Chicken.’ Nina chuckles as Mairéad continues, ‘I really believed El Greco was his
actual name.’
‘No, you ninny, it means The Greek,’ Donal corrects her. Nina agrees. ‘He
signed his paintings in Greek characters, using his real name, Domenikos
Theotocopoulos, sometimes followed by Kres, meaning Cretan.’
‘See!’ exclaims Donal.
‘And don’t you pair just know your art history!’ Mairéad teases.
Nina gives her a look of mock severity. ‘Set the table and behave,’ she orders,
handing her a blue and white tablecoth to match the Italian plates.
Hearing her Irish guests recall the turpentine scented studio near the Venetian
harbour, Nina pictures him flinging wide the shutters, light flooding into the high
ceilinged room as he sharpens pencils, cleans brushes, puts off mixing his paints
while he gazes out at the Aegean, whose same waters now wrap her island in their
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spring 2009
embrace.
‘He’d have loved it here,’ Mairéad murmurs, looking through the French doors
at the monastery, perched like a white dove on the mountain, the scattered trees
and verdant valley. A biblical Arcadia.
‘You bet he would,’ adds Donal, refilling their glasses.
‘I wonder,’ muses Nina.
‘No doubt about it,’ insists Mairéad.
‘I can’t bear to throw away any of his stuff,’ Nina sighs. ‘Brought the lot over
from Athens.’ His eagles and falcons look so lifelike she wants to ruffle their
feathers. ‘I must sort out his things.’
‘Perhaps when Jenny comes . . . ?’ Mairéad suggests, echoing Nina’s thoughts.
Nina puts a CD into the player. With the high ceiling the acoustics are good.
And perfect for the voice of her songbird daughter. The house is filled with the
sound. At the end of the CD the Irish guests burst into spontaneous applause.
Then, while they are still clapping, as if on cue, Jenny wren bursts through the
door, to be covered in kisses and laughter. Nina smiles proudly.
After lunch Donal and Mairéad clear the table things into the kitchen. Nina
hugs her daughter once more, this time with a sigh. ‘You look tired.’ Jenny laughs,
‘ All I need is a rest ’ Gazing at her baglama that he lovingly made, she sighs, ‘It’s
good to be home.’ Nina smiles. There’s so much to discuss. Later. After Jenny’s
siesta in her white dovecote.
‘Lunch was great. As usual.’ She kisses her mother.
Nina laughs, ‘So I haven’t lost my touch?’
‘That’ll be the day!’ her daughter jokes.
Nina follows her out to the balcony. Jenny stands there, breathing in the air
over the valley. A flutter of wings in the stillness makes them both look upwards
to where the kestrel hangs poised in the air with quivering wings, demonstrating
how no other hawk has so perfected the art of stationary flight.
‘Look Mama!’ Jenny whispers, pointing to the bird who gives a shrill kee-kee-kee
cry, then circles a few times before hovering over new ground.
‘No wonder he’s known as Windhover,’ Nina murmurs. She recalls the bird in
her dream and is filled with the same feeling of peace. ‘It’s like as if … ’ she
breaks off to watch Jenny watching the kestrel, who glides forward to hover once
more. She catches her eye. They smile as if sharing a secret.
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Crannóg 20
ISLANDS
CHRISTINA MANWELLER
Outside her kitchen window my neighbor suspends
two plastic see-through cylinders, looping twine
from nails pummeled into the eave.
She packs the tubes mornings
like clockwork no matter the weather.
Watering geranium and cacti
set to winter in the south window
I catch sight of her now and then
lugging a steel pail
chock full of black oil seeds
mixed with white prove millet.
If she comes round now
there’ll be a quick flush of wings
and the silver maple’s branches
sprouting palm-sized bodies
that tuck their wings
and wait.
Light dims swiftly in December;
a handful of sparrows pick
at the buffet
the last time before night
we watch:
she from her side
me from mine
the birds between
and now they leave.
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spring 2009
LA BELLE ÉPOQUE
DOMINIC CONNELL
An avid seamstress makes a dress with nothing
but skill, nothing but notions on a thread,
or copying a picture got from Paris.
She works the hourglass in doss-house dreams
of nimble-scissored shapes or dainty lace,
and sends the needle swimming, dashing lines
like morse around the edges of her models.
Deftly, she places catches on their hearts,
sews herself into every hidden seam.
She knows them inside out long before they fill
its silks, sees them set out in their carriages,
and where they dance and dine. Her callused touch still
dresses them, looms long after she has left
and pawned her boots for bread.
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Crannóg 20
THIEF
STEPHEN MAYOFF
Morning suffers through the stained glass of Youkali Cathedral.
On a ceiling of painted sky all the time in the world glitters
beyond my grasp. I kneel between pews streaked with fading ochre.
I am a petty thief dealing in the small change of seconds,
minutes and hours, surrounded by the tools of my trade:
the flashlight and the crowbar and this shapeless paper-sack heart
in which to carry coppers of misspent grief.
I pray to your sleeping image and hover in the guise of a dream
over your half-opened mouth then pull away
as coins of light weigh down on your eyelids and you feel the dream
being torn from the very hairs rooted along your spine.
I am a thief whose only faith lies in the grime under
cracked nails of fingers pressed
together for a brief measure of atonement
and still there is no relief from this obsession
with seconds, minutes and hours.
The echo of a golden pin dropped from an imagined Heaven
betrays all the forsaken Hallelujahs hanging upside down from the bell tower
their leathery wings are all the proof I need: there can be no
redemption in scratching out each day as if it was my first.
I am the trembling thief who has crawled in beside you these past nights,
believing each one will be my last.
I fill my pockets with crumbs and cold ashes
and come here every morning to offer these shameless alms
for the sole purpose of reviving our most tender wounds.
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spring 2009
THE NIGHT BURN
NOELLE SULLIVAN
Cold sinking feeling:
only this stove, with oxygen,
keeps us from frigid stars.
We seek fire that burns most brightly,
leaving the door agape
until it takes our dear offerings:
the old papers, the logs,
charcoals and ash,
lingering tongues of flame.
This foggy morning, a full moon
centers his great eye on our pane
like the king of Tory Island
singing, welcoming, waiting
for a day’s upstart
to kindle his ashen misery.
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Crannóg 20
ST. ANTHONY OF THE LOST AND FOUND
I
BEE SMITH
t would give me love. Clodagh’s mind telegraphed this statement and she
breathed it out into the rainy early morning. It was consequent of nothing.
It was not consecutive to a previous thought. It just emerged from her early
morning mind, not yet breakfasted, but washed and dressed and just off the
commuter train.
She walked along the city pavement in her shiny boots. They sparkled with the
rain, black, square-toed, stout. It rained and rained, chilling the summer stone
dead, like a St. Swithin’s Day joke or curse. For forty days and forty nights it had
rained. It should have been the season to sip white wine, carefully chilled, lifted to
appreciative lips on terraces or patios or pavement cafes. But the season had been
rolled up and the show had moved on to some other city.
It was too much to bear having to live year round in a raincoat, even one as
expensive, well cut and tasteful as the one Clodagh wore each day now. She
walked along the pavement and a recalcitrant stone slab tipped up from its bed
and bathed her beautifully shod toes in brown slush. She passed shops full of
flashy dresses, iridescent, cheap clubbing clobber. She passed fast food outlets
that were much of a muchness. She passed a council building that used to house
classrooms. She passed offices that used to be hospital wards. She passed building
sites and was overshadowed by cranes. She passed plate glass, much chrome,
flashing lights, plastic litterbins and Plexiglas phone booths. She passed urban
attempts at nature strategically placed in concrete planters at the corner of
intersections.
She stopped at some traffic lights and the buses and little cars and the bigger
cars with one or two people swept past on a tidal wave of purposefulness.
Momentarily, the crowd paused until the Green Man flickered and twinkled his
signal; then they surged onwards to their schedules, the awaiting agendas, the
needs of others and their neediness.
Clodagh hesitated at the corner with the cathedral. She had banished
childhood atavisms, prejudices, bogeywoman nuns and cross-dressed priests. Yet
she paused and considered and pressed the oak door forward. She left the grimy
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spring 2009
sky of morning to enter a deeper gloom, the twilight zone of a large church, the
candlelit red glow of the tabernacle. In the Lady Chapel a youngish priest was
saying early morning mass for the two human handfuls that made up the
congregation. Along the side aisle lay the shrines with their racks of votive
candles. The saints waited their devotees impervious, their plaster visages
moulded into perpetual dispassion. There was the Madonna with the Child Jesus,
the Little Flower grasping the thorny roses to her tubercular chest, a stiff Holy
Family, St Francis of Assisi feeding the birds and finally St. Anthony brandishing
a lily.
The last two saints were nearly identical monks, sackcloth twins. In the
flickering light Clodagh was hard pressed to tell which was which until she noticed
that little bird nestling on St. Francis’ outstretched arm. St. Anthony was nearer to
her as she stood in the cool corridor with the soft droning of the liturgy in the
background consecrating the body of Christ. A middle-aged man tinkled the bells
in the sanctuary.
They used to have young altar boys for that but everything had changed or
been abolished like limbo.
You can pay your money, say your prayer and light a candle for hope. Or
possibly faith or the possibility of charity. Saints were in the business of
intercessions.
St.Anthony found things, lost objects. Or found miracles.
What did I lose?
Clodagh did not know if she had lost anything. Absent-mindedly she patted
her pocket. Her keys were there. Her shoulder handbag was secured like a
bandoleer. Yet she gravitated to this saintly icon as sure as he was her magnetic
north.
She vaguely sensed an empty space in her chest. Her belly growled. She lit her
candle. She got up off her knees and thought about a large latte. With many
spoonfuls of sugar.
She was not yet fully awake.
Maybe it was the rain, shimmering now, coming down in sheets, waving across
the streets like bed linen flapping on the line in the laundry days of her childhood.
It would give me love.
Perhaps she needed more sleep. Everyone was sleep deprived these days. It
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Crannóg 20
defined you as post-modern. Or perhaps it was a holiday that she needed in a
place free of rain or tropical storms or earthquakes. Or perhaps she was just
coming down with a summer cold.
Later, after doing her daily schedule, after ticking off many items on her
agenda, after speaking politely to strangers on the telephone and civilly to the
strangers that she shared her square footage with for eight hours each day, she put
on her expensive, well cut raincoat and turned off the lights and locked up her
office. She unfurled her umbrella as she went out into the overcast evening, this
permanent twilight of rain. Still it rained, lightly now, dropping like silent tears on
the faces of those who have secret sorrows.
She walked past the plate glass and the cranes. The drills and jackhammers had
gone silent; the raindrops spattered the shiny chrome and faintly obscured the
neon signs of wine bars. She passed icy mannequins in shop windows that saluted
the street awash with hurrying figures.
She paused and looked but did not really see. It was only a colour that tugged
at the corner of her eye. Or was it a texture that piqued her interest for an instant?
Restless, she continued on, walking towards the train station. She was looking and
yet not looking with a hungry eye. Then she noticed the auction house.
It was open for an evening viewing. She had never gone into an auction show
room. She stopped and she pressed lightly on the doors that were an understated
mahoghony, spit polished shiny brass door furniture announcing good taste and
much money. She went in.
There was a catalogue stating lots being sold from the Estate of Miss Isabel
Moody, late of this city, recently deceased at age ninety. Here was her accumulated
wealth and taste, her books, curtains, pristine line, Staffordshire potter, art deco
glassware all parcelled out into numbered lots. Here was Miss Moody’s near
century old horde of clutter, partially inherited and partially collected.
Clodagh, who lived in a purpose-built apartment block furnished in postmodern shades of lilac and grey, was charmed. Clodagh had no family to speak of
since her family did not actually speak to one another. Gently, imperceptibly,
Clodagh was seduced by the array of Miss Isabel Moody’s collected life. She was
suddenly possessed of a yearning to have a piece of Miss Isabel Moody, her
musty curtains or good Chesterfield or pressed glassware.
She imagined an assembly of acquaintances over to dinner in her flat. “Oh,”
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spring 2009
she would say when asked over the fusion food about some bit of bric- a -brac.
“That old thing!” Then she would let the sentence trail off and they would think
that she was a Someone who inherited legacies, someone with cherished elderly
great aunts. She would be someone with a history behind her. Miss Moody’s
history would surround her and seep into her varnished floorboards. Whoever
Miss Moody was or had been.
Who had Miss Moody been? Maybe she had been rich and petulant and
selfish? Well, she hadn’t married so it was likely she was a woman able to please
herself. Or maybe she had been one of those redoubtable maiden ladies who were
Nursing Matrons or High School Principals who dedicated their lives to their
vocation like nuns and lived for doing Good Work for Society?
So what was it to be? What history was she to give to Miss Isabel Moody?
What should she take to her lilac and grey flat? Would it be the drawing room
curtains? Should she make them into a faux four-poster to surround her spacious
bed? Or was it to be the art deco tea set, the charming naïve coloured plates and
teapot, the matching sugar bowl and milk jug? Surely she could take those down
some Saturday afternoon when some female friends could come around and
illicitly indulge in cream cakes and Earl Grey tea. They could pretend that they
lived in more civilised times, gossiping amongst themselves and licking the cream
delicately off pinkie fingers. Or perhaps she might take down one of those glossy
cookbooks that her mother sent by post at Christmas. She could make some
homemade delicacy, a Linzertorte, for instance, or an apricot tart with marzipan
and a crème patisserie base. It would be an Occasion. It would be a Miss Moody
Moment to take down off the shelf to dust off occasionally and play with by the
by.
It would give me love.
The phrase echoed in her mind. It was a mantra now, a fervent desire, as
urgent as a novena.
It would give me love.
Clodagh stood empty-handed except for the folded auction catalogue. She was
surrounded by the vast quantity of things, full of longing, flat-stomached,
hungering, and wondering which item was the one that would give her love.
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Crannóg 20
YOU SLEEP
ANNA MCKERROW
You sleep; my heart in a sprung line trails then docks.
I am that mother, that lover,
The one that counts cost.
I watch over you in the night. I emanate,
call the songs of comfort, harmonise the
creamy balance in your inner ear.
You sleep: my heart turns drowsy somersaults.
I smoothe away the night sweats.
You are the ache under my ribs, the charcoal thickness behind my eyes.
Sleep songs chart your rough waters, boy’s light shoulders
I am that young wife, that lover: I am lulled by your blue looks.
I have, I have always. You pulsed
in regions but not known.
I am that sister, that lover,
I am that patient arrow home.
Expectant, I counted cost after cost.
I have. I have always.
You sleep; my heart in a sprung line trails then docks.
62
Biographical details
Elizabeth Barbato’s recent publications include a poem in a forthcoming anthology by Ragged Sky press,
and poetry in The Tipton Poetry Review, US 1 Poets’ Worksheets, and The Cider Press Review. She recently won the
2008 Don Russ poetry prize from the Kennesaw Review, and her chapbook will be published in 2009 by
Dancing Girl Press.
Niamh Boyce lives in Laois, Ireland. She was one of this year’s winners of the annual Meath Library Éist
poetry competition. She holds a M.Phil in Women’s Studies and a Degree in English. She was one of six
artists who created a willow labyrinth sculpture with Greencrafts at this year’s Electric Picnic Festival.
Trained in community arts practice she is active in promoting arts events in rural Laois and has exhibited at
many exhibitions.
Sandra Bunting grew up in Canada and now lives in Galway. Her poetry collection Identified in Trees was
published in 2006 by Marram Press. Besides poetry, she writes fiction, works in journalism and is involved
in printmaking, batik and silkpainting.
Martin Burke is an Irish poet/playwright living in Belgium His latest publication: ITHACA is published by
Lapwing Press, Belfast.
Patricia Burke Brogan is the author of the internationally acclaimed plays Eclipsed and Stained Glass at
Samhain. Her collections of poems and etchings Above the Waves Calligraphy was published by Salmon. She
received a 2005 Arts Council Bursary in Drama. Her monologue Requiem of Love had its World Premiere at
the Town Hall Theatre, Galway in November 2005 prior to moving to the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire.
It was staged as part of Galway’s Project ’06 in July 2006. The script of the play is published by
Wordsonthestreet who also recently reissued the play Eclipsed. Her recent poetry collection is Décollage New
and Selected Poems also from Wordsonthestreet. www.wordsonthestreet.com.
Laura Ann Caffrey is originally from Kildare, but is now living in Galway. She is currently studying English
and German at NUIG.
Dominic Connell was born in Liverpool, brought up in Newtonards and St Helens, Merseyside, and now
lives in Naas. He has published in Boyne Berries and online.
Phillip Crymble's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Cuirt
Annual, The North, Succour, Brand, Iota, The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian & Irish Verse
and numerous other publications worldwide. In 2007 he read in Poetry Ireland's annual Introductions series
in Dublin. Wide Boy, his first short collection, was recently released by Lapwing, Belfast.
Kate Dempsey's poetry and fiction is widely published in Ireland and the UK and she was selected to read
for Poetry Ireland Introductions and Windows Publications Introductions as well as at Electric Picnic. She
has been nominated for and won many prizes including The Francis MacManus and Hennessy awards for
Poetry and for Fiction.
Caroline England has been published in Transmission, Parameter, Pipeline, Chimera, Lamport Court, Peace and
Freedom Press, nr1, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Recusant, Succour, Pen Pusher, Positive Words, Twisted Tongue,
The Text, White Chimney and The Ugly Tree.
Jarlath Fahy’s first collection is The Man Who Was Haunted By Beautiful Smells (Wordsonthestreet 2007)
Orla Fay is from Dunderry, Co. Meath. She is a former student of N.U.I.Galway and is a member of
Boyne Writers Group.
Brid Fitzpatrick is a writer and researcher. She is a graduate of NUIG and UCD. She has had work
published in The Word, Ireland’s Eye and Boyne Berries 4. She lives in Dublin.
Libby Hart was a recipient of a D J O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship at The Australian Centre, University of
Melbourne in 2003. Her suite of poems Fresh News from the Arctic won the Somerset National Poetry Prize in
2005. Her first collection of poetry, also called Fresh News from the Arctic, was published in 2006 by
Interactive Press (Australia) and received the Anne Elder Award as part of the Fellowship of Australian
Writers' National Literary Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize.
Aideen Henry had poems published in Crannóg, West 47, the Shop, Revival, Stony Thursday Book,
Ropes, Southword, the Cúirt Annual. Her first poetry collection has been accepted for publication by
Salmon in 2010. She completed the MA in Writing at NUI, Galway in 2008.
Eleanor Hooker lives in North Tipperary and is a full time volunteer. She is PRO and founder member of
the Dromineer Literary Festival, Rear Commodore of Lough Derg Yacht Club and Helm and Press Officer
for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She has a BA (Hons 1st) from the Open University and an MA (Hons)
from the University of Northumbria. In a previous incarnation she was a nurse-midwife.
Ruth Le Gear was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1985, she now lives and works in Galway. Ruth obtained a
first class honours Degree in Fine Art (Sculpture) and graduated from Cluain Mhuire, GMIT in 2007.
Exhibitions include Dystopia, Milan, Impressions in the Galway Arts Center ( Emerging Artist Award),
Claremorris Open 08, EV+A 08 Limerick ( John Hunt Residency award winner) Artist in Galway, Cead in
China, Lessedra World Art print Annual in Sofia, Bulgaria, Iontas 07, National small works exhibition at the
Sligo Art Gallery and Sculpture in Context at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin.
Eamonn Lynskey's poetry has appeared in many magazines. A first collection was issued by Lapwing
in1998 and a second is due from Seven Towers publications in late 2009. He was nominated for a Sunday
Tribune/ Hennessy Award for New Irish Poetry in 2006. A poem of his will appears in the 2009 OXFAM
calendar. He is a regular contributor to the open mic in Dublin.
Christina Manweller is a writer and photographer living in Colorado, U.S.A., where she has worked as a
waitress, a seismologist, a shipping clerk, and an art gallery proprietor.
James Martyn is from Galway and is a member of the Talking Stick Workshop there. He has had poems
published in The Cúirt Journal, West 47, Books Ireland, Crannóg, The Stinging Fly and The SHOp. He was
shortlisted for Francis McManus Award in 2007 and 2008 and The William Trevor International Short
Story Competition in 2007. He was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award in 2006 and in 2008.
Steven Mayoff is a writer living on Prince Edward Island, Canada. His work has appeared in Canadian
magazines such as the Windsor Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, The Naashwaak Review, Grain, The Dalhousie Review,
Filling Station, The Malahat Review, CV2 as well as Terrain.org, Aquapolis, Mobius Poetry Magazine and Euphony
(USA), The Dublin Quarterly (Ireland), The Arabesques Review (Algeria) and Upstairs At Duroc (France). His first
collection of fiction, Fatted Calf Blues, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2009.
Bee Smith is the co-author of a poetry collection, Binary Star, with Helen Shay. Born in the USA. She lived
twenty years in England before moving to Ireland in 2001. Her poetry has been published in Writing Women,
Magma, The SHOp and the online zines Shit Creek Review and Chiarascuro. She is a member of the Irish Haiku
Society and was featured in Poetry Ireland's 2007 Introductions series.
Benjamin Robinson was born in Northern Ireland in 1964. His articles and short stories have appeared in
Sein und Werden, Yuan Yang, The Swallow's Tail, dANDelion; online at Dogmatika, 3AM Magazine, Tqrstories, and
Recirca; forthcoming in The Benefactor. He lives in Dublin.
Clare Sawtell lives in Kinvara, Co Galway where she teaches cello. Her recent poetry collection is The
Wishing Ball.
Noel Sloboda currently lives in Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Penn State York and serves as
dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival. His first book of poetry, Shell Games, was published in
2008 by sunnyoutside.
David Starkey directs the creative writing program at Santa Barbara City College and has published several
collections of poems from small presses, most recently Starkey’s Book of States (Boson Books, 2007),
Adventures of the Minor Poet (Artamo Press, 2007), Ways of Being Dead: New and Selected Poems (Artamo, 2006),
David Starkey’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2002) and Fear of Everything, winner of Palanquin Press's Spring
2000 chapbook contest. He has published in literary magazines such as Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal,
Cutbank, Faultline, Greensboro Review, The Journal, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Nebraska Review,
Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Poetry Review,
Sycamore Review, Texas Review, and Wormwood Review.
Noelle Sullivan’s poems and fiction have appeared in The Bloomsbury Review, Fourteen Hills, Puerto del Sol,
Poetry Northwest, and other places. Author of the blog Montana Gael, she lives near Yellowstone Park with her
husband and three children.
Christian Ward is a 28 year old London based poet who recently graduated from Roehampton University,
London, with a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. His next chapbook, Bone Transmissions,
will be released in March 2009 courtesy of Maverick Duck Press.