“If [O’Brien] had any doubts about the faith in which he was brought up, they were on Manichaean grounds; somehow perhaps the balance of good and evil in the universe as we know it had been disturbed in favour of evil.”
— Anthony Cronin
Flann died on April Fool’s of a tumour lodged
at the back of his nose
like something of life he’d caught wind of early
but congealed, then, to a solid, though mistaken,
notion of fixity.
On the Dun Laoghaire-to-Holyhead boat I’d wept
in the throes
of hilarity — the wintering mice of K’s toes
nesting under my bum — could’ve been weeping
for the Irish Sea,
its crinkled, jade glumness and ratchety Geiger
activity,
for all the bearded Americans seated two rows
over knew. They were having a go, a cappella, at
The Who’s
“I Can See for Miles” which, recasting this now, I can
see I should’ve joined in on. The present is always
misspent.
At Swim was a slog through Gaelic, gags and
Finn McCool,
but the Kafka-on-laughing-gas of The Third Policeman
truly won me. Though it drowned, later, in a puddle at our
tent’s low end.