Ireland West Airport, Knock

 

I used to drink alone.
In a giant pub, in a giant city.
Hundreds of miles from home.
I used to watch the football matches,
Although I couldn’t care less for football.

 

I used to drink hot whiskey,
And tell the bar man I had a sore throat.
Even though I didn’t,
I just liked the taste of whiskey.

 

I used to pull sheets of plywood up steep stairs.
I used to cut up bits of metal with a hacksaw.
I used to carry planks from one end of the site to another.
I used to arrive at seven, take lunch at one, and finish at six.

 

I used to stop at the pub on the way home,
And order dinner and beer.
I used to watch films on Netflix,
And on YouTube I saw every episode of Killinaskully.

 

I ordered pizzas at the weekends,
And skyped home.
One time in a nightclub I asked a girl if she wanted a Cigarette.
She replied in German that her previous boyfriend had died of lung cancer.
I said that I was sorry to hear that,
But I lit another cigarette anyway.
Then I went to the bathroom and cried.
I cried for that poor girl who had buried her boyfriend.
I had received my leaving cert results that day.
I had scored well, and my friends were at home celebrating.
They sent me a snapchat of how they had suffered a flat tyre on the way to town.

 

I matched with a girl on tinder whose name was Cordelia.
Her description said, “political nerd”.
When I met her she said she didn’t like immigration.
I was an immigrant.
So I didn’t text her again.

 

Instead I used a pay phone to call the workplace of a girl from home,
Who told me how much she missed me,
And filled me in on local news,
Who was dead and who had dropped out of college.

 

I lived in fear that the next time I got back to Galway,
My friends would all be gone to Australia.
I once got a phone call from my mother,
To say that my dad had been in a car crash.
I rang his phone but there was no answer,
So I booked flights home.

 

I flew through Belgium where my cousin was on a building site too.
Then I stopped in England and stayed a day with my mother’s sister,
Who’s married out there.
And I called to see my grandmother’s sister who lived on the other side of London.
She was 97 and had left our place at home for work,
80 years before I did.

 

She had a posh sort of English accent,
Which broke into half Connaught-Irish,
When I shared gossip from home.
She gave me tea and cake,
And put twenty pounds in my pocket.
Then she told me how they used to kill the pigs
At home when she was young.

 

The names of the fields and sheds are all still the same.
I wished that I could take her home with me,
Walking frame and her 97 years’ worth of photo albums,
To see again the farm she left, 80 years ago.

 

When I got home to Galway another grandaunt had died.
But my dad was fine.

 

I sent a Christmas card to the landlord in Frankfurt that year,
And he sent one back.
And then I moved to Copenhagen,
Where I worked for a man from Achill,
Building an underground.

 

When the underground was built I came home again,
I had enough money to put myself through college,
But my friends were all in America,
And some in Dublin.
I was addicted to cigarettes,
And my mother got cancer.

 

 

Unseen

The second paper is unseen poetry.

Long and hard have I thought as I sat,

I learned an essay by heart,

But unseen poetry – how study for that?

 

 

I’ll walk for air fresh,

To rid myself of stress,

Down by the canal and up Dominick Street.

Across the river the homeless I meet,

Until I reach Shop Street and buskers.

 

The man who charges Americans to sit on his donkey.

The Christmas shoppers.

A cappuccino and politics with old men in McCambridges.

Where students with rollies stress for exams.

 

The old men tell of potholes and the tiger,

As if we ourselves don’t remember that.

The IRA with tattoos and leaflets on water charges.

The day is young and cold and bright.

Women with babies pass us by.

 

I move to the corner to sit with the old man from the Claddagh,

As he sketches Galway scenes.

For they are loud – the IRA.

They killed my aunt’s husband in 1974 on this street.

Do they remember that day?

Which man with which tattoo pulled the trigger?

 

My poor aunt, and she so nice,

Walks past us, as luck would have it.

Shopping bag and walking stick on her way to Mass.

They are silent as she passes by – the Ira.

Confirming that they do remember that day.

When the Guards cleaned the blood off Shop Street.

But she forgives them. She told me and she told the press.

 

Walking unphased, on a mission of cat food and Mass cards,

Unphased by their presence, nor the fact that I sit near them.

I must forgive as well. Its hard.

I leave a box of cigarettes on their table,

And I follow Noreen to Mass.

 

Unseen events. Unseen poetry, waiting for me in an exam hall in Salthill.

 

 

The most remarkable thing about this poem is that I wrote it as it happened – I typed it in an email to myself as the events documented within it unfolded before me. It is raw. Unedited. I am publishing it here because perhaps there are lessons to be learned. I never met the man that was shot. But on that day I was filled with bitterness. All bitterness left me when I saw his widow, my great aunt, and I suppose the act of donating a box of cigarettes to their table was somewhat of a random physical manifestation of the ability to forgive that I found somewhere inside me.

 

 

Front Page of Connacht Tribune, 16th August 1974

 

Luke Silke and Mrs Nora O’Connor, Widow to the late Jerome O’Connor RIP.

 

Further reading on the topic is available here:

Forty years on from murder that shook Galway