The Cathach 2011 - Volume II (PDF) - Sligo Libraries

fill with the cold intense light of approaching night. They have a wintery beauty, in this
stark hour. Glass is my favourite medium, the only art I saw as a child. I wait as the
light drains from the glass, keeping as best I can, a silent vigil with my sister in
Chicago.
Like Larkin, I have tended:
‘ …towards this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built
This special shell?’
I am grateful for its vast spaces, towards the end of a hard bright day.
The streets are streaked with light as I make my way back across the river, to wait.
So much of our lives are lived Elsewhere. In Boston and Chicago and San Francisco,
In Paris and Beijing. We inhabit those places in our imagination, whenever our loved
ones come to mind. Or if we have visited, we can see the kitchen, the street, smell the
asphalt. Papers are written and conferences held on concepts such as ‘place’ and
‘home’ but when we hear ‘They are bringing him home’, hear it with a physical
relief, each of us knows the exact road we will travel from Shannon. We know the
lakes, the hills, and exactly where the land will open out into the sea. We know where
that journey will begin, and where exactly, it ends. And hope there is peace there.
- Mary O’Malley
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