From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

CANTO XX11 (begins here)

"Oh, we got the message,
there is some imagination left,
a MOLESKINE needs a rest,
what became The Divine Comedy?
I know his mother died before he grew,
sounds like you’re turning her inside out.
Bring back Beatrice I say,
La Vita Nuova,
aren’t we entitled to  music,
troubadours, fiesta?
Why does the search for an honest man
have to entail such misery?
Twenty-one years that epic took
- the one you so admire.
Twenty-one days you’ve been writing
and we’re still in Hell.
Inferno fascination,
take us on to Purgatory,
MOLESKINES bask in Paradise.
Cafe Paradiso - now that was a better story."

It was late in the day when I came to that wood
the sun had gone down to win back the day
the moon in her light, the stars where they should

An order sublimely dictated, a thrown they say
nine circles torment the wicked unworthy life.
Where’s my Virgil, we face a monstrous way.

Bring me bright terraces of a promised land,
write your path to purification.
Peace and hope this MOLESKINE offers you.
Remember Magdalene,
Mary of my dreams,
I could give her to you,
if you’ll take her hand as guide.
Who knows who sits on the thrown these days,
it might well be the one you seek.
Some say the Angels call the shots,
but demand you become blind
in order to see the radiance
of the honest soul exposed.
Get a move on,
you’ve met the thieves,
hypocrites, soothsayers, flatterers
and seducers,
and you’re a blasphemer.
Stop taking the piss out of the abyss,
there are spendthrifts adrift
on the surface of the Green Lake.
Come off your high horse
and puncture a few for me." 

(to be continued here) 

Dear Grace,

Without Pat Heffernan, O’Mahony’s bookshop in Limerick wouldn’t have worked.  He held the place together.  I’m thinking back to the 1950s & ’60s when I was a child.  Pat was the man in the background whom the public never saw, who counted the money, tended to the administration. He did things I didn’t understand. He was always there from my earliest days.  I bet there was never a day I went into the bookshop when he wasn’t there.  Pat (Padraig) was my father’s right hand man.  I remember Pat Heffernan dearly, though it’s many years since I’ve seen him.  His style had a very good influence on my life.  
I wrote this poem in Adare, after going to see  him repose in Daffy’s funeral home in Croom.  I shook hands with many of his family.  I had to write something. The poor little poem carries so many memories for me… May he rest in peace.

The man behind the scenes in the bookshop

He did the books for the bookshop
from his office,
he never raised his voice.
A shock of white hair
before time,
an impecable ledger,
Pat Heffernan held the fort
behind the scenes
out of public sight.
Across the corridor from the boss,
he loved his tea,
after dotting the ‘i’s.
He suited the job.

I looked up to Pat,
tall, upright, quiet.
When he spoke, I strained to catch
the words.
He was from another world,
where the people were not from dust
but kindness itself
- in those days, it was also rare. 

__________________________ 

ps: I never knew anything of his interest in greyhounds