{"id":181,"date":"2013-03-10T16:34:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T23:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stickpersonpoetry.com\/spp\/?p=181"},"modified":"2022-01-28T10:00:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T18:00:37","slug":"0310","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stickpersonpoetry.com\/spp\/2013\/03\/10\/0310\/","title":{"rendered":"0310"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

0310
\nOh to be in Mayo<\/p>\n

Going Home to Mayo, Winter, 1949<\/strong>
\nBy Paul Durcan<\/p>\n

Leaving behind us the alien, foreign city of Dublin
\nMy father drove through the night in an old Ford Anglia,
\nHis five-year-old son in the seat beside him,
\nThe rexine seat of red leatherette,
\nAnd a yellow moon peered in through the windscreen.
\n‘Daddy, Daddy,’ I cried, ‘Pass out the moon,’
\nBut no matter how hard he drove he could not pass out the moon.
\nEach town we passed through was another milestone
\nAnd their names were magic passwords into eternity:
\nKilcock, Kinnegad, Strokestown, Elphin,
\nTarmonbarry, Tulsk, Ballaghaderreen, Ballavarry;
\nNow we were in Mayo and the next stop was Turlough,
\nThe village of Turlough in the heartland of Mayo,
\nAnd my father’s mother’s house, all oil-lamps and women,
\nAnd my bedroom over the public bar below,
\nAnd in the morning cattle-cries and cock-crows:
\nLife’s seemingly seamless garment gorgeously rent
\nBy their screeches and bellowings. And in the evenings
\nI walked with my father in the high grass down by the river
\nTalking with him \u2013 an unheard-of thing in the city.
\nBut home was not home and the moon could be no more outflanked
\nThan the daylight nightmare of Dublin city:
\nBack down along the canal we chugged into the city
\nAnd each lock-gate tolled our mutual doom;
\nAnd railings and palings and asphalt and traffic-lights,
\nAnd blocks after blocks of so-called ‘new’ tenements \u2013
\nThousands of crosses of loneliness planted
\nIn the narrowing grave of the life of the father;
\nIn the wide, wide cemetery of the boy’s childhood.<\/p>\n