1 minute read
DS Maolalai
Do I look as old as he does?
dinner in a bar on the river in carrick-on-shannon on my father’ s 60th birthday. 60 years old, and looking about 60, he takes the chance to hold court, to have wine and some three pints of guinness. on the walls are photos of politicians and actors eating, and musicians. he points to each one in wide beery candour, says “do I look old as he does?” we eat together, looking at our steaks and potatoes, his teetotal leitrim neighbours patient as they listen to him drinking.
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DS Maolalai
If only I’d been a painter
days on the days and also their years, and I thought of nothing but sky and its opening— its red light, its dark and its melancholy. I thought of it much as water in a glass must think of the glass, as unread books must think of the shelf they sit upon. the rose rising westward as the sun fell through and burned the air to thunderstorm. the bearing lines of highways, as they humped their cargos up. the texture of my wallpaper, blue shading to black and purple. I lay back on the sofa, eating toast and staring through the windows. god, stretched on a long workday, legs to the horizon, flaming a blue distance—the colours and their autumn blues.
