Twenties

Alcohol poured on double grief. Delirium Tremens. Three faces (not Pound’s petals) on a clothes horse, at night, menacing, nodding, we know, we know! A well-wrought poem quelled atavistic fears, silenced the chattering voices. A gothic novel beside the fire, the taste of foam from large bottles of stout, bracing, belief in something more, maybe a love affair. Not a great aspect from the front room – a suicide burial ground at the crossroads. Ballybough (reclaimed from the sea) Boy Does Well! Through the arch of Trinity College. Academic silence. Editor of Icarus, long established literary magazine, affording some importance, in demand among poets in pubs. Companions, oblique-minded; one found dead, stone cold at a leaking gas fire in College rooms. Another, rolling cigarettes with claw-like nicotine-stained fingers. Habitué of the psychiatric wards. Sheltered accommodation at last. Was love not at all possible for them? More like honourable obsessions. Intimacy opening a fault line, turbulent waters rising within. Again, a persisting poem, tugging at the sleeve, righting a listing mind.

Thirties

From where did she come when my breathing was shallow? Not the girl next door. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. Vows abandoned. A drunk’s dried-out dinner in the oven. No, not of this world. A plume of lilac blossoms for the bare formica table. A glistening orange when I was sick. A picnic on a park bench in spring. I was reaching, breathlessly. She placed three kisses on my cheek, took a broken vase and repaired it with gold, to hold flowers. Lilies the colours of ice. A dark crimson rose, fire still burning there. She planned to gather irises in the local park, but I never saw her again. Persephone abducted by Hades? Body of young woman found in Fairview Park.

Forties

Curious shire horses buffeted me in the short-cut field. In the car between the hedgerows, her skirt snagged on my haversack and lifted. Was the intense attraction we felt, evidence of a death imprint? Both survivors, witnesses of death too young. Could love erase the numbing mark? Indelible? Introduce our chilled selves to blue skies? Eat strawberries from her garden? A light kiss that last night on the writers’ retreat. Love had been seeping in all week. Taste of toothpaste. A longer kiss leaving in the morning. An empty train station. Trains spawning distance. A wish that they would collide. So broken, a collision, an attempt at intimacy. Letters, keepsakes crossing the Irish Sea. Walking a tightrope, slacking. The subterfuge was killing her. First to the post in the morning. ‘Trollop!’. ‘Home wrecker!’ The death imprint was deep within us. Feel nothing so that death can be redundant, not repeated? In dreams, hands holding the pain of our survival. Truer, sadder lives to live, even at a distance..

Fifties

Through the ornate metal archway of the old park, to a wooden bench in the shade, a bower, away from joggers, walkers, racing dogs and children playing. The furtive nature of our meetings. Holding hands only at night, kissing down a side street. Was there a boyfriend, a husband? I didn’t question the secrecy too closely. Smitten. Old couple following the sun from bench to bench. ‘He’s ninety, you know!’ Suddenly, her tongue inside my mouth, doing somersaults, knocking off my trilby hat. In bed, facing each other, kissing, cherishing. In some kind of love. Her other love began to appear, furtively, behind a tree, in a cafe. Persistent. Riding shotgun at her flat, enabling her bulimia? Frail, shoulder blades sharp. I asked, ‘how is she?’ His reply, I like your hat.’

Gerry McDonnell