Picture of Brian O'Nolan
IN A PALACE BAR AFTERNOON
‘When I first came to Dublin in 1939, I thought the Palace the most wonderful temple of art.’ (Patrick Kavanagh)
Dead conversations
and dud cheques
litter the gaps
between the gawping portraits
in this literary back room.
Here in the afternoon of Irish culture,
I hear the creak of Kavanagh’s knees
going down the steep bog stairs
pissing words away,
holding another conversation
in his clumsy hands.
So what’s a poetry boy to do?
Sozzle through another day,
dance betwen the lines of pints of plain,
wallow in the crevices of Beckett’s genius,
creep around the Palace floor,
scraping for scraps of dead oral histories?
For today,
I’ll put away my pen
worn out with trying
to trap the City of Limerick
in groping poems.
I’ll sit back
and crack with Lonsdale and the lads,
let Bertie Smyllie’s barking patter
wash over my weariness.
Leave it to the shawlies
in the huddled snug
to set things right,
I’m flying without a passport today,
buzzing along with Jimmy Joyce on board
this Ryanair Ulysses jet,
At Swim Two Birds.
And what’s the point
of lies in ink
when real poetry
should make a woman come
with the touch
of bird song on the lips of this hour?
Give your tongues a break,
Behan and Houlihan
and the rest,
we’re dust
on a skin of Guinness.
And yet
and yet,
the twinkle of light
through the old smoke of patter
does make the breath
in the lungs
of a Dublin dancing day
as worthwhile
as the sweeping kiss
of that gull’s wings
stroking the mouth of the Liffey.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
