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| Athlones A town racked on a river, too far in, too cosseted by land to be tossed and turned by anything so flighty as a sea. Always under the governess eye of Lough Ree, bearing down in mourning silks with a sudden tetchiness on boats that splutter their poorly learned past tenses much too late. The same boats on the river are like firstborns in a county family propped up on surnames and wide berths on a current lately civilized, its face scrubbed clean and all its trawl of Latin verbs and parlour songs boxed clean away for tomorrow morning's class. This is a river taken in hand and made to march along the fastness of the Castle and the Barracks wall: it keeps the swell of Connaught well at bay. A two-faced river, holding the line between the Pale and Irishtown, the to-and-fro of siege or confiscation, dual strategies of granite and edict. A river kept in check, though dampness slakes the rights and wrongs, the black and white of its unequal board where all the lines cast themselves off to be submerged in what cannot keep quiet, or in tow. All its words have been vouchsafed in the low-slung building opposite the church that put its toe in the water once and froze, eye to eye with upper decks and punters waving in at readers picking past the watermark for a change of plot or a first edition of the way things ought to be. Its marbled covers might anticipate a sunlight that could open out a river's darknesses as onyx slips or deckled, gold-leaf pages. The apartment windows jostle for its preference like dancers primmed in shoes too small, their candied thank yous quite sucked dry and their bouquet of responses clasped too close. Such light as ventures in their recess advances in shifts of obligation and poor grace, stammers a thin compliment and is lured away by a river just then letting fall a beaded string of laughter on a wildly polished floor. The same light tinkles down through Northgate Street like someone running late, all streaming hair and necklaces that chink like moorings in a breeze, only to trip on the butcher's awnings or be splayed in Burgess' window like a pomegranate on an oilcloth, spilling out some exotic largesse. It roots then in the florist's bins for cellophane to dabble in, for colour to be sweet-talked into giving its metallic sheath the slip. The child with the stick of rock knows how it goes: he is holding up the wrapper so it crinkles into rainbows on his palm. In the Genoa Café, the girl manoeuvring her Coke like a hand-mirror to snare the arc of brilliance on the cloth knows too. So does the man angling a suitcase to entice a thread of it from the swags of a plastic raincoat coming through. A car goes past him once, its fender spilling a hoard of light on the asphalt and his shoe. Or the wrist that is opening a window on the second floor clips the sun with the face of a watch, and sprays shavings of it down on the highlights of a head just then emerging from Estelle's Salon. Or the woman with her bag of books turning her head to check for cars so her glasses flick a shimmer from the river over the bulkhead shadow of St Peter's and St Paul's. Or the sparkler on another woman's hand slewing announcements all over town, with a rumour of charm in every unmatched word. Like the saffron accent of awnings on Indian stalls in Market Square leaning into a clatter of hangers that fills the seams of dresses that were too much even when the Ritz stood still, décolleté and shoulder-hunched, with a hemline skirting the river like a cotton thread spun out between Calcutta and Hollywood; between a full-frontal prairie sunset and a midland dawn; between two provinces and two elective ends. The Galway train declaims the middle ground, cleaves the river to an agitated squall, and takes hardly more than a minute to cross the bridge, shake out its wingtip carriages and take off again to another place that is a fraction closer to something about to happen or to conclude a sweet arrangement with a reason to go on or to go under at the point where more than accent slips between at one and alone, washing up against the urge to be, at last, at home, pacing over paths that cast off as I do, in a bed of words, loose as years ago, and coursing still. That could, at any second, come asunder in a darkening hour, or gather as pleats of rain into a pleated river. What matter? Its end will still engage with gold and promises, and nothing about the gunmetal sheen of the pavement or the flurry of people with one purpose in their minds can alter that. So let blinds be drawn, cars spill muck and piecemeal darkness on his shoes. Let the woman step out of Estelle's, uncurl her umbrella, then head off; let the flowers contract, the pomegranate wither, the conversation in the Genoa pick up in the half-light of confidences almost spilled, a gleam of observations over tea. Let readers borrow their new order of words: stood in the door of Fr Mathew Hall, they are sentries waiting for the castle to brighten, for the church to lift its veil of winter, for their cars to be no longer lost to them in the swell of Market Square. Let jackdaws overawe the bastion, gulls pierce the Shannon's tireless drone, traffic pick up from the lights and carry on. Let computers wind down, office doors conduct their two-step to the tune of what falls between See you tomorrow and Oh, by the way . . . Step out a while. Those footfalls could be stitches in an overcoated dusk. The river soars alongside; evening attends. The wind chimes in the Gallery set aside their rufflings for the night. The final note of their cadenza could be the first in the waltz that plays over and over in the Royal Hotel as the calendar clicks into place and all the clocks keep time. The sound of them is like smithereens of coloured glass; a smattering of rain on the ash trees of Accommodation Road; like the tinkle of light on a river learned by rote, if not by heart. The sky concedes. Any minute now will come release. - - - Vona Groarke _____________________ new york injury lawyers kids incorporated truck accident lawyers |