“Is Éireannach me!”
Silently imputing crimes of an unspecified nature to my accent, a man in spectacles spoke to me at the bar. -So ye are not of these parts? There was a dark and hooded manner on him. He stood stiff at his drink, balaclava black, shielding his eyes behind his glass. Although he spoke, it was clear he was closed to me and as uninviting in his welcome as a pub window seen from the street of a strange town. I hesitate to use my hippy word negativity, but in his case the ayes did not have it. His eyes had something quite else. Although vitreous, they were still a
ble to convey an icy cold bundled in smouldering aggression. Not a gunman, I could see that at once. Not a professional. Just a loose provincial cannon. A sráid bhaile dreamer. He seemed to be a man who had stepped out of darkness and found only darkness. He had tasted history at tenth hand and it left a bitter and unsatisfied taste in his mouth. I knew him. He had been loitering here with intent for generations. Much has been said of the passage of time, but there are people in Ireland for whom time does not pass. It stagnates only and when it stagnates it breeds strange monsters. There is no passage for them. They lurk in the back passage, waiting, for what, they do not know. Until they think this might be it. I think he thought I might be it.
I looked him up and down. He was not one of them. This place was too far from the border. And anyway, the discipline was lacking. When you are an amadán yourself it is not hard to recognise another eejit, as long as you are not a total amadán. Perhaps he was not a total eejit. Perhaps his need for satisfaction was too great to be ignored. Perhaps in his family the anti-Christs de Valera and McQuaid had been worshipped as a matter of course.
I myself have always considered myself to be a gentleman, but certainly not a seoinín. But I was raised over the water. Over a lot of water. You would not be able to put a finger on my accent by now. And I do not warm to finger pointers, particularly if we have not been formally introduced.
My appearance and perhaps my Anglo-elocution belie me. I may seem on the surface to be a gentleman but I have recently come to the conclusion that in spite of an earlier squeaky-clean self-image, I am actually not at heart a gentleman and certainly not a gentle man.
At the age of twelve I always carried a brass knuckleduster in the top pocket of my beautifully tailored hand-me-down tweed hunting jacket and had considered sewing razor blades into th
e lining of my lapels had not my teenage years been full of forced and enjoyable violence in the OTC where I found brens and stens and two-inch mortars both delightfully destructive, satisfying, and legal to boot.
-Is Éireannach me! I said, and broke his glasses.
Silently imputing crimes of an unspecified nature to my accent, a man in spectacles spoke to me at the bar. -So ye are not of these parts? There was a dark and hooded manner on him. He stood stiff at his drink, balaclava black, shielding his eyes behind his glass. Although he spoke, it was clear he was closed to me and as uninviting in his welcome as a pub window seen from the street of a strange town. I hesitate to use my hippy word negativity, but in his case the ayes did not have it. His eyes had something quite else. Although vitreous, they were still a
ble to convey an icy cold bundled in smouldering aggression. Not a gunman, I could see that at once. Not a professional. Just a loose provincial cannon. A sráid bhaile dreamer. He seemed to be a man who had stepped out of darkness and found only darkness. He had tasted history at tenth hand and it left a bitter and unsatisfied taste in his mouth. I knew him. He had been loitering here with intent for generations. Much has been said of the passage of time, but there are people in Ireland for whom time does not pass. It stagnates only and when it stagnates it breeds strange monsters. There is no passage for them. They lurk in the back passage, waiting, for what, they do not know. Until they think this might be it. I think he thought I might be it.I looked him up and down. He was not one of them. This place was too far from the border. And anyway, the discipline was lacking. When you are an amadán yourself it is not hard to recognise another eejit, as long as you are not a total amadán. Perhaps he was not a total eejit. Perhaps his need for satisfaction was too great to be ignored. Perhaps in his family the anti-Christs de Valera and McQuaid had been worshipped as a matter of course.
I myself have always considered myself to be a gentleman, but certainly not a seoinín. But I was raised over the water. Over a lot of water. You would not be able to put a finger on my accent by now. And I do not warm to finger pointers, particularly if we have not been formally introduced.
My appearance and perhaps my Anglo-elocution belie me. I may seem on the surface to be a gentleman but I have recently come to the conclusion that in spite of an earlier squeaky-clean self-image, I am actually not at heart a gentleman and certainly not a gentle man.
At the age of twelve I always carried a brass knuckleduster in the top pocket of my beautifully tailored hand-me-down tweed hunting jacket and had considered sewing razor blades into th
e lining of my lapels had not my teenage years been full of forced and enjoyable violence in the OTC where I found brens and stens and two-inch mortars both delightfully destructive, satisfying, and legal to boot.-Is Éireannach me! I said, and broke his glasses.
So this was Agincourt.
Or Gettysburg.
Or Arnhem.
Or, who knows?
Some long remembered battlefield,
Scarred and somewhat canonized,
With a brazen plaque.
There was a stone wall, I recall,
And approaching it,
Unarmed,
A meadow.
It was a garden in June,
Boughed with the weight of Summer,
Bound down with honeysuckle
and purple ropes of blackberry,
Breathing slowly out its perfumed breath,
Watching the swallows.
And then,
Like a stray bullet,
A hummingbird ricochet’d behind my ears,
And I threw myself down
And felt the warm earth sigh.
Or Gettysburg.
Or Arnhem.
Or, who knows?
Some long remembered battlefield,
Scarred and somewhat canonized,
With a brazen plaque.
There was a stone wall, I recall,
And approaching it,
Unarmed,
A meadow.
It was a garden in June,
Boughed with the weight of Summer,
Bound down with honeysuckle
and purple ropes of blackberry,
Breathing slowly out its perfumed breath,
Watching the swallows.
And then,
Like a stray bullet,
A hummingbird ricochet’d behind my ears,
And I threw myself down
And felt the warm earth sigh.
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