With a shake of the rattle and roll
the perambulator takes a morning stroll.
Just popping out. Back in a bit.
Small plastic nubs on the pavement
harness in place for a safe enslavement.
Just popping out. Back in a bit.
Off for the paper. And a carton of milk.
Sit still will you, sit will you, sit will you sit.
Hard, hard wheels with no fancy hydraulics.
Not like the umbrella carriage for Miss Mary
Poppins. A lesson is felt in every vibration.
Along with the frolics, it's a bumpety road.
And the researchers are saying, This is
not good. This is not good for children to know.
They need pumpkins and feathers and tyres
of sweet pleasures before they're too old.
Silence is the sound of space expanding.
The sound of fibres stretching, myelin sheathing.
The quiet retreat of hurry.
Silence is the slow heart-beat.
The rendered heart being stroked. The bass notes
of the cat indulged.
Silence is the creaking hammock.
The heart swinging, held between the veined hands
of the walking trees.
I was
born the 6th of June 1923, in the heart of Clouncuneen.
And my mother gave birth to triplets, two boys and a girl.
Me and Pat were born this evening at 4 o'clock
and my other brother was born the following day, at 4 o' clock.
And Dr Hickey that delivered us at the birth said,
“Well Mrs McMahon”, he said, “I'll be down tomorrow
at 4 o' clock and the third child will be born”. And my father
was out in the road, and he see'd the car coming down the heighth.
And my mother says to him, “Well doctor, she says. “A miracle,
she says to him, that I should have triplets, three babies”.
“Well, Mrs McMahon, he said, God's will is no miracle.”
And when we were born, my grandmother was there in the house,
my mother's mother. And there was two or three women
in the kitchen waiting for the good news, that everything was alright.
And she brought me and Pat out in her two hands - and showed us
to the women in the kitchen and she said, “O' thiarna tŕocaire. God keep us”.
And Dr Hickey put the three afterbirths up on the table and they examined them.
And we were very hard to manage, we were so tiny.
We had to be wrapped in baize, each one of us, for three months.
We couldn't be dressed. And we had a cradle. And the three of us was in the one cradle.
And I was in the middle and the two boys were one side of me.
And my mother cut up a sheet, a flannelette sheet, and made squares of it.
And she'd hem 'em and put them under our arses.
There was no powder to be got that time, no baby powder.
She'd put a saucer of flour down on the griddle and brown it.
Keep turning it. And she'd take it up, bring it to a box. Leave it cool.
And my mother had a set of triplets
and she had two sets of twins
and she had seven children in four years and a half
and she had four singles after that.
Click here for audio version
Run away up to the shops. She said.
Back with a packet of posh biscuits.
To be arranged in ritual on best china,
the plate with gold and magenta petals.
Arranged from the centre piece of green
foil-wrap chocolate, fanning out with
snowflake arms of custard creams, jellied
diamonds, bourbons and fluffy wafers.
Brought in with the careful tread of
ceremony, to the Important Visitor.
The promoted waiter about to wash the
Lord's feet. Best offerings to the priest.
Retreating then to the sliding door, half
in the kitchen and half out the living room.
On call for more waiting. For the eventual,
the inevitable weakening, or noticing.
For The Visitor to offer the plate. Shaming
of the green-foil biscuit. Waiting for the
chorus of the performance. "Ye'd think ye
were starved. Making a holy show of me".
And my mother gave birth to triplets, two boys and a girl.
Me and Pat were born this evening at 4 o'clock
and my other brother was born the following day, at 4 o' clock.
And Dr Hickey that delivered us at the birth said,
“Well Mrs McMahon”, he said, “I'll be down tomorrow
at 4 o' clock and the third child will be born”. And my father
was out in the road, and he see'd the car coming down the heighth.
And my mother says to him, “Well doctor, she says. “A miracle,
she says to him, that I should have triplets, three babies”.
“Well, Mrs McMahon, he said, God's will is no miracle.”
And when we were born, my grandmother was there in the house,
my mother's mother. And there was two or three women
in the kitchen waiting for the good news, that everything was alright.
And she brought me and Pat out in her two hands - and showed us
to the women in the kitchen and she said, “O' thiarna tŕocaire. God keep us”.
And Dr Hickey put the three afterbirths up on the table and they examined them.
And we were very hard to manage, we were so tiny.
We had to be wrapped in baize, each one of us, for three months.
We couldn't be dressed. And we had a cradle. And the three of us was in the one cradle.
And I was in the middle and the two boys were one side of me.
And my mother cut up a sheet, a flannelette sheet, and made squares of it.
And she'd hem 'em and put them under our arses.
There was no powder to be got that time, no baby powder.
She'd put a saucer of flour down on the griddle and brown it.
Keep turning it. And she'd take it up, bring it to a box. Leave it cool.
And my mother had a set of triplets
and she had two sets of twins
and she had seven children in four years and a half
and she had four singles after that.
Click here for audio version
Run away up to the shops. She said.
Back with a packet of posh biscuits.
To be arranged in ritual on best china,
the plate with gold and magenta petals.
Arranged from the centre piece of green
foil-wrap chocolate, fanning out with
snowflake arms of custard creams, jellied
diamonds, bourbons and fluffy wafers.
Brought in with the careful tread of
ceremony, to the Important Visitor.
The promoted waiter about to wash the
Lord's feet. Best offerings to the priest.
Retreating then to the sliding door, half
in the kitchen and half out the living room.
On call for more waiting. For the eventual,
the inevitable weakening, or noticing.
For The Visitor to offer the plate. Shaming
of the green-foil biscuit. Waiting for the
chorus of the performance. "Ye'd think ye
were starved. Making a holy show of me".
So
awkward, so mulish were they
they'd fight over their own toe nails. Over
the rinds of clippings and bacon drippings.
Going over and over with the long hold.
Nothing was as good to them as a bad fight.
The hotter and colder the better.
So long as it was long and so long as it
never veered into anything indefinite.
The rules were simple. Opposite
to opposite. Never change position.
Keep going. Keep solid. Never tire.
Going over and over with the long hold.
When they almost forgot and forgot
what it was they started, it was no matter.
When their shoulders froze and their head
set in stone, it was no matter.
When the moths fluttered in their best suit
it was no matter. When the cask was closed
it was no matter. When the ghosts laughed here
after. It was over and over with their long hold.
Priscilla precisely sat. (Crossing her pins most nicely.)
Everything in its place. And a place for everything.
Look in my cupboards and see. Tins in lines of columns
and rows. (Soldiers to the palace - no place to go).
Tomatoes, chick peas and beans. And then the sardines.
Cornered to the right. Six for tomatoes, five in a row for
the sunflowers (nearest and dearest to the door with the light).
Everything in its place. And a place for everything.
Pick up a tin, any tin, and not a dirt sticky ring to be seen.
No excuse at all not to clean. No excuse at all not to gleam.
Her pinny scrubbed like a bumble bee. The bleach on its blistered knees.
Just look in my cupboards and see. Trace your finger between the rows.
No mouldy bug or crawly slug. Check your fingers and see what I mean.
No dirt at all to be seen. Even the dust is clean.
Everything in its place. And a place for everything.
Nothing intruding, extruding or slightly moving.
That's what it takes to be clean. Priscilla, the domestic preen.
"Sit down you're making the palace untidy",
(Now do you see what I mean?)
(Photographs of Castleward House, 1767 in Alain de Botton's:
The Architecture of Happiness. p44-45)
For the art of artful compromise, take note
of the aristocrats who put compromise in stone.
With equal wills and equally opposite tastes
they would not agree on the style of their home.
Arms crossed, neither would budge - and in their
equal and opposite force a balance was struck.
The architect bowed to the force of their wallets
and the force of their will. And gave in. Cooked
up a plan never seen before in any book north or
south of Strawberry Hill. He designed a two-faced
mansion joined by dotted lines along the scalp.
The join visible only by parting the hair. Taste
for two sorted in a carnival of artful compromise.
She got her way facing the back. The pinnacles
and windows making their most triangular point.
The roof in the style of a castle. (So fanatical
was she about the gothic look). He got his way
facing out. With columns in classical proportions
and bays and the roof on his side (the front) in the
style of a roman villa. The verdict? A distortion.
An ugly monstrosity. A waste of good money.
Viscount Bangor and Lady Blithe agreed to differ
with public opinion. The house was perfect for their
conditions. (But what would they have for dinner?)
Little Bo Peep closed her eyes for a while
"I'll just rest my lids, leave my crook on the side".
Then after a bit she opened them wide,
Her dream so beguiling, she was checking for size.
Heading all round-about, the fields for her sheep
For her lovely white flock, with the Persil white fleece.
Where had they gone, these perfect-wash sheep?
And who were these grazing, looking nothing like neat?
She was checking again, poking sleep from surprise
Who were these gazing with their unguent eyes?
Blinking again, she saw what was not
Her flock had gone off, or been changed for this lot.
And who were these gazing, in dappled coat clothes?
A dalmatian type dapple, like milk spilt on crows.
And what was there staring, in her field for her sheep
Was a flock of small cows, with the smallest of feet.
As told by Mary Reidy.
The story of the grandfather she'd never met.
The story she was told by her own mother.
She was only six weeks when her father died.
Her father died at forty years.
He got a pain one night, she said, and they sent for the priest.
I think it was a neighbouring man that went for the priest.
And he went for the priest anyway, and the priest came.
And as he was passing the Kilballyowen graveyard
he'd see all the men inside in the graveyard hurling ball.
And the man who went for the priest, he could hear them
saying: Kick the ball Martin Loinsigh. Kick the ball.
Kick the ball Martin Loinsigh. Kick the ball.
And when the neighbouring man went home and told her.
Her father was dead.
Eighteen years after the barbed wire was
cut down and the spiral curtain erased
the red deer from the East stayed in the East
and
the red deer from the West stayed in the West.
Not even a single nostril hair, an antler tip or
inquisitive tongue, not even a wayward fawn
strayed to the other side. Not once. Not ever.
The side that was no longer the other's side.
In the new born snow, nothing visible remained
of this harsh boundary. But their iron memory
keeps the map afraid.
they'd fight over their own toe nails. Over
the rinds of clippings and bacon drippings.
Going over and over with the long hold.
Nothing was as good to them as a bad fight.
The hotter and colder the better.
So long as it was long and so long as it
never veered into anything indefinite.
The rules were simple. Opposite
to opposite. Never change position.
Keep going. Keep solid. Never tire.
Going over and over with the long hold.
When they almost forgot and forgot
what it was they started, it was no matter.
When their shoulders froze and their head
set in stone, it was no matter.
When the moths fluttered in their best suit
it was no matter. When the cask was closed
it was no matter. When the ghosts laughed here
after. It was over and over with their long hold.
Priscilla precisely sat. (Crossing her pins most nicely.)
Everything in its place. And a place for everything.
Look in my cupboards and see. Tins in lines of columns
and rows. (Soldiers to the palace - no place to go).
Tomatoes, chick peas and beans. And then the sardines.
Cornered to the right. Six for tomatoes, five in a row for
the sunflowers (nearest and dearest to the door with the light).
Everything in its place. And a place for everything.
Pick up a tin, any tin, and not a dirt sticky ring to be seen.
No excuse at all not to clean. No excuse at all not to gleam.
Her pinny scrubbed like a bumble bee. The bleach on its blistered knees.
Just look in my cupboards and see. Trace your finger between the rows.
No mouldy bug or crawly slug. Check your fingers and see what I mean.
No dirt at all to be seen. Even the dust is clean.
Everything in its place. And a place for everything.
Nothing intruding, extruding or slightly moving.
That's what it takes to be clean. Priscilla, the domestic preen.
"Sit down you're making the palace untidy",
(Now do you see what I mean?)
(Photographs of Castleward House, 1767 in Alain de Botton's:
The Architecture of Happiness. p44-45)
For the art of artful compromise, take note
of the aristocrats who put compromise in stone.
With equal wills and equally opposite tastes
they would not agree on the style of their home.
Arms crossed, neither would budge - and in their
equal and opposite force a balance was struck.
The architect bowed to the force of their wallets
and the force of their will. And gave in. Cooked
up a plan never seen before in any book north or
south of Strawberry Hill. He designed a two-faced
mansion joined by dotted lines along the scalp.
The join visible only by parting the hair. Taste
for two sorted in a carnival of artful compromise.
She got her way facing the back. The pinnacles
and windows making their most triangular point.
The roof in the style of a castle. (So fanatical
was she about the gothic look). He got his way
facing out. With columns in classical proportions
and bays and the roof on his side (the front) in the
style of a roman villa. The verdict? A distortion.
An ugly monstrosity. A waste of good money.
Viscount Bangor and Lady Blithe agreed to differ
with public opinion. The house was perfect for their
conditions. (But what would they have for dinner?)
Little Bo Peep closed her eyes for a while
"I'll just rest my lids, leave my crook on the side".
Then after a bit she opened them wide,
Her dream so beguiling, she was checking for size.
Heading all round-about, the fields for her sheep
For her lovely white flock, with the Persil white fleece.
Where had they gone, these perfect-wash sheep?
And who were these grazing, looking nothing like neat?
She was checking again, poking sleep from surprise
Who were these gazing with their unguent eyes?
Blinking again, she saw what was not
Her flock had gone off, or been changed for this lot.
And who were these gazing, in dappled coat clothes?
A dalmatian type dapple, like milk spilt on crows.
And what was there staring, in her field for her sheep
Was a flock of small cows, with the smallest of feet.
As told by Mary Reidy.
The story of the grandfather she'd never met.
The story she was told by her own mother.
She was only six weeks when her father died.
Her father died at forty years.
He got a pain one night, she said, and they sent for the priest.
I think it was a neighbouring man that went for the priest.
And he went for the priest anyway, and the priest came.
And as he was passing the Kilballyowen graveyard
he'd see all the men inside in the graveyard hurling ball.
And the man who went for the priest, he could hear them
saying: Kick the ball Martin Loinsigh. Kick the ball.
Kick the ball Martin Loinsigh. Kick the ball.
And when the neighbouring man went home and told her.
Her father was dead.
Eighteen years after the barbed wire was
cut down and the spiral curtain erased
the red deer from the East stayed in the East
and
the red deer from the West stayed in the West.
Not even a single nostril hair, an antler tip or
inquisitive tongue, not even a wayward fawn
strayed to the other side. Not once. Not ever.
The side that was no longer the other's side.
In the new born snow, nothing visible remained
of this harsh boundary. But their iron memory
keeps the map afraid.
“Infatuation, a faulty
adviser, the first link of sorrow.”
Aeschylus: Agamemnon
Infatuation bathed and sprayed with Lynx.
Sprayed in the underpants and underpits in
a haze 'round the house, his aura a non-stop
monologue, raising to the highest altar of the
highest praise, her laughter, hair, her eyes and
everything she says and doesn't say, the music
she plays. Everything. About her everything
amazed. And he waxes his hair and rubs off
a spot and tries himself out at different angles,
brushes and gargles again, puffs his chest and
checks and checks again the watch that has
slowed way past the pace of his heart. Five
minutes. Five more minutes and he can call
for her. And he'll offer her his trinket, warm
in his hands. Not a sliver, his whole heart,
pulsing the chain: the second link.
Jonathan Trappe had a dream, sitting in his office swivel chair,
gazing vacantly out of the window. He imagined taking to the air.
Just taking off; buying fifty-five huge helium balloons;
a fantasia of reds, whites, greens, yellows and blues.
And he saw himself in slow motion frames, inflating each one,
tying each with string, hefting a huge clod of a stone to put on
the swivel seat, so that the balloons wouldn't lift it away,
not yet, at any rate; not until all fifty-five were tied in place.
A cacophony on the arms of his chair, a bored filing cabinet grey.
And then he imagined easing the stone off, right down to the date.
He could see it now. Raleigh, North Carolina, June 7th, 2008.
Early morning, commute time to work, half past eight.
And that was it. He decided this dream could not be late.
And so he left for a coffee break and walked at brisk pace
to a shop in the town centre, staring at his reflection facing
him in the window, beyond to the bright glare of party games;
striding in, he picked fifty-five huge helium balloons; matter of factly
paying for them, with no fuss, like it was an everyday activity.
The next day, he left work, and took to the air, in his office chair.
Aeschylus: Agamemnon
Infatuation bathed and sprayed with Lynx.
Sprayed in the underpants and underpits in
a haze 'round the house, his aura a non-stop
monologue, raising to the highest altar of the
highest praise, her laughter, hair, her eyes and
everything she says and doesn't say, the music
she plays. Everything. About her everything
amazed. And he waxes his hair and rubs off
a spot and tries himself out at different angles,
brushes and gargles again, puffs his chest and
checks and checks again the watch that has
slowed way past the pace of his heart. Five
minutes. Five more minutes and he can call
for her. And he'll offer her his trinket, warm
in his hands. Not a sliver, his whole heart,
pulsing the chain: the second link.
Jonathan Trappe had a dream, sitting in his office swivel chair,
gazing vacantly out of the window. He imagined taking to the air.
Just taking off; buying fifty-five huge helium balloons;
a fantasia of reds, whites, greens, yellows and blues.
And he saw himself in slow motion frames, inflating each one,
tying each with string, hefting a huge clod of a stone to put on
the swivel seat, so that the balloons wouldn't lift it away,
not yet, at any rate; not until all fifty-five were tied in place.
A cacophony on the arms of his chair, a bored filing cabinet grey.
And then he imagined easing the stone off, right down to the date.
He could see it now. Raleigh, North Carolina, June 7th, 2008.
Early morning, commute time to work, half past eight.
And that was it. He decided this dream could not be late.
And so he left for a coffee break and walked at brisk pace
to a shop in the town centre, staring at his reflection facing
him in the window, beyond to the bright glare of party games;
striding in, he picked fifty-five huge helium balloons; matter of factly
paying for them, with no fuss, like it was an everyday activity.
The next day, he left work, and took to the air, in his office chair.