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Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

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Root Finding

Conversation stalls; then one
musician mentions the return
of the man who never did come back
and bartalk cruises off again.

Two Americans today
turned up in a Sligo taxi
to brandish angst about an ancestor
who might have been from hereabouts.
My own more diffident allusion
to a local grandfather
has met with courteous consideration.

Collective recall of his name
attaches to a patch of woodland
round a roofless house. Ungraciously
I speculate this acreage
might serve as common patrimony
for any visitor blown in
on a gust of curiosity.
 
There is general agreement
that Mrs Rooney would remember
something if she wasn’t dead. She washed
her own hair right up to the end.

Around eleven thirty
the barman opens up the door
to let some smoke escape. But not the clients.
The musicians’ throats are flushed enough
for them to sing as well as play
and I have been in dialogues
on Cromwell, Irish beef and Eddie Jordan.

I can’t put down the Guinness
like a resident, but try
to feel at home and ponder what thin kinship
I might claim around the bar stools,
indulge what small celebrity
accompanies the late return
of the man who wasn’t ever here.

 

Page(s) 37-38

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