Poem for Tuesday and Kilfenora Cathedral

Going Home to Mayo, Winter, 1949 

By Paul Durcan 

Leaving behind us the alien, foreign city of Dublin

My father drove through the night in an old Ford Anglia,

His five-year-old son in the seat beside him,

The rexine seat of red leatherette,

And a yellow moon peered in through the windscreen.

'Daddy, Daddy,' I cried, 'Pass out the moon,'

But no matter how hard he drove he could not pass out the moon.

Each town we passed through was another milestone

And their names were magic passwords into eternity:

Kilcock, Kinnegad, Strokestown, Elphin,

Tarmonbarry, Tulsk, Ballaghaderreen, Ballavarry;

Now we were in Mayo and the next stop was Turlough,

The village of Turlough in the heartland of Mayo,

And my father's mother's house, all oil-lamps and women,

And my bedroom over the public bar below,

And in the morning cattle-cries and cock-crows:

Life's seemingly seamless garment gorgeously rent

By their screeches and bellowings. And in the evenings

I walked with my father in the high grass down by the river

Talking with him – an unheard-of thing in the city.

But home was not home and the moon could be no more outflanked

Than the daylight nightmare of Dublin city:

Back down along the canal we chugged into the city

And each lock-gate tolled our mutual doom;

And railings and palings and asphalt and traffic-lights,

And blocks after blocks of so-called 'new' tenements –

Thousands of crosses of loneliness planted

In the narrowing grave of the life of the father;

In the wide, wide cemetery of the boy's childhood.

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We had rain all day Tuesday, so I spent it indoors finishing my Ireland Shutterfly books and doing some laundry and other chores. My Voyager group was missing two people, so we skipped watching an episode (we're up to a two-parter anyway) and just chatted for an hour and a half about election depression and entertaining distractions. 

Cheryl, Paul and I watched Deadpool and Wolverine together and it was just as great as the first time, maybe better because I was aware of cameos -- human and "20th Century Fox graveyard" -- to keep an eye out for. Then we watched the 2003 Daredevil because it's one of the few Marvel movies we'd never seen. 

Here are some photos from Kilfenora Cathedral in the Burren, founded in the 6th century, containing three high crosses, a Gothic sedilia, and the tomb of Neptune Blood, whose nephew tried to steal the British crown jewels in 1671. The transept's oak ceiling decayed, so it has a glass roof to protect what remains of the interior architecture: