Place
gear for the drivers – wet hessian bags worn as cowls over wet heads and clothes. Big
horses, horses falling. Small boys hanging on behind carts and lorries for a lang. Drivers
lashing back at them with a whip. Patrick Street full of sidecars standing for hire to
hurling matches down the Park."
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Messenger boys on bikes whizzing downhill, feet on handlebars, singing. Ads in the
paper giving notice that a bonesetter would attend at such a pub on such an evening.
O’Mahony’s pub - stout sold from wooden barrels with a tap hammered in, sawdust,
spittoons, a snug for the women. Me handing up a jug to be filled with stout or ale for the
da when he was sick at home."
Cork Journeys
Jennifer Horgan / Friendly Call / RoamCork
The sand in Youghal was so thick you’d have to plough through it,
Dragging your bags and baggage from the train.
No such thing as playing in the water, most of us were afraid.
Lucky if we’d been shown how to float, how to kick our legs behind us.
Men rolled trousers to their knees, knotting the four corners
of a handkerchief to cool their bothered heads.
I never drank tea, but I did then; even the tea tasted different,
Our cups hanging from our bags, filled by Youghal women.
Straight from the dark of their kitchen, out the back door to us.
We worried the men might be left behind, jumping off the train
for a piddle every stop. The Pints (and the half pints) they’d had with cousins
too much for their bladders to manage the whole way home.
Everything else, empty – the bags lighter, sandwiches eaten.
The fairs ones reddened by sun, and only a few paid for, rushed through
past the ticket man, all of us running from the carriage up steps to the hill,
- Our little hearts filled with summer.
Years later, there were other journeys too, this time for dancing,
three or four nights a week, into the early hours,
closer to our shifts than we should have been.
Thumbing lifts, squeezing into car seats, piled high on top of one another,
or singing on a bus to Crosshaven. The smell of sugar in the hair
of girls who couldn’t afford lacquer, and in my mind
I’m forever in the Arcadia, and Michael’s still standing on the two long steps.
I’m waiting for life to begin on a Wednesday night in June.
Waiting for Michael to dance me again. Dance me again.
That surprise of his tap on my shoulder staying the years since.
His tanned hands on his Honda, zooming us towards the city still.
His waist pressed against mine at Father O Flynn’s gate on Fair Hill.
Cork Nun Remembers
Jennifer Horgan / Friendly Call / RoamCork
I was born Margaret but my names have changed –
part of being a nun. I was Bernadette too, then Anne.
My father never wanted me to leave – the only one
who knew how to run his butcher shop.
But I was soon gone o? to Dublin, then Nigeria.
I remember we’d chant we’d washed our hands
Well-Well-Well. No-one liked us touching lepers
with the same hands we used to plant vegetables.
To sew and pray, filling small bowls with stew.
Carrying water out from our well, even to men with guns.
My brother left for London at 15. He cried. We put a sticker
on him so he’d be identified by cousins at Paddington.
He joined the army then. Was taught how to mend socks
cook and drive, and later, how to read. He shot a donkey
once in a ditch by the dam in Iniscarra. Was made pay for
the lost round. Found the dark there comforting, keeping
watch against bombs that might flood the city. My mother
liked bright colours, the bluebells for on Our Lady’s alter,
and us little ones carrying tins of blackberries inside a
white pram, imagining warm bread, yellow butter, the thick
spread of jam.