he said because he was
sure I wouldn’t see 22
the way I lived back then—
well, I guess I showed them
even if I am a little tired today—
it’s not because I’m turning 50 okay?—
or because I celebrated yesterday,
or stayed up too late and got up too early
for the past few days, or because I
got a tattoo that’s older than you
and that kind of stuff seems to matter
to the few who don’t know yet that the
differences are there for enticement
and celebration, not to justify some
fear of the unknown—it’s all knowable—
and I know I’ve said it before and it
seems kind of corny, even when I blame
it on Selby, but like he says, it’s
all love and either we let fear get
in the way of that or not—not is
what I vote for—what I’m tired of
is the way that fear goes around from
one sad clown to another, beating each
other down for what somebody else did
to them—the sin we saw on that
video—which one depends on where
you’re viewing it from, they say—but
I don’t say that—I say somebody beats
up on that defenseless guy because
somebody else beat up on them once—
sounds too simple doesn’t it?—I
know, it’s more complex than that,
but I really don’t care today—I’ve
watched a lot of people live and die
in my time, and most have been beaten
by someone or something at sometime or
another and some let it kill them and
some used it as an excuse to kill
somebody else and some never got over
it and some of us got over it again
and again but when your number’s called
it don’t matter where you been it
matters where you are, and I want to
be right smack in the middle of love,
the kind that comes from above and
makes everything possible . . .
WHERE DO WE BELONG
for Neal Peters, Terence Winch and John McCarthy
Passing through these hills, these lakes,
these fates I thought I had outwitted—
who am I here? in the land of my
fathers—this harsh wind & chill, the
sheets of rain lashing out like my
anger at meager perspectives on life
despite all the vistas the world has
forgotten—I am myself—the himself
of this life I’m given—& when the
rain clears—or goes soft—the land-
scapes pull my heart to peaks of
awe & wonder—how could this be?
so much beauty must be graced with
the living lace of showers, the veils
of a reality too God-like to endure—
ah—I’m happy—& confused—like a
lover returning after rejection & recon-
ciliation—what do I expect to find?
the answer to my dreams.
An uncle long dead—the “gentle”
one his wife compared me to—
his nose, his chin, his manly smile—
in this cousin “once removed” it
took me days to find—he once
lived in the same thatched
cottage my grandfather rose every
morning in, from the day he was
born until he left for distant
shores—& us—the family he would
have—the kids, in fear & arrogance,
rejecting what he was in all their
American striving—after what?
what we have now & find so
lacking in fulfillment we have to
slam & shoot & burn the mother-
fucker down before it’s ours?—
it took me 50 years to find that
thatched roof cottage, uninhabited
for only four, still standing, not for
many more—& maybe me too.
Or him—this cousin Paddy—
69—a bachelor—the last of
“our Lallys” in County Galway where
I first went to see the famous bay
& was disappointed & excited all at
once—it was an August day but the
dampness & chill in the air made it
necessary for me to wear a coat, which
wasn’t even enough when the wind
began to blow—dark clouds filled the sky—
rain fell sporadically—the water could
not have looked less inviting—darker
than any I’ve ever seen outside of dreams—
& choppy, like a major winter storm
was brewing, when everywhere else I
had just been—L.A., New York—my friends
& family were stewing in the end-of-summer
heat waves of our new world order
weather—but here, in Galway, sweaters
were the order of the day—& no way
would anybody be able to see through the
thick sky cover any moon going
down on any bay—
& I had all I
could do to keep on my side of the
“highway,” which meant any road big
enough for two cars to pass without
a heart attack, as I tried to get
away from the toy like streets of
Galway City, so narrow they were best
suited for donkey carts and the
proverbial wheelbarrow, not compact
cars like the one I’m having trouble
negotiating through this faux rush
hour when I accidentally bump a car
in front of me and out jumps a young
lady yelling things like “stupid” at
me & all I can do is roll down my
window & explain I’m not used to
driving on this side of the road
or car because I’m from America—
“Well, I’m not!” she shouts as she
shakes her head at I guess what
must be a rare occurrence, although
I can’t see why since they all drive,
as McCarthy says, like Indians who
just got ahold of their first ponies.
& where are they all off to anyway
on an island not big enough to take
that long to reach the edges of—
nowhere, I discover, as they pass
me going 85 & I’m just trying not
to slide off into the hedges or
the stone walls that line these
country roads, because when I
come around the next bend, there
they are, backed up and waiting
patiently while someone drives
their cows on home, or stops to
chat up a neighbor—no honking
horns, no impatient scorn, no
guns drawn, just acceptance of
the situation—until it’s time
to move again, & then they’re
off, around blind curves with
little enough room for two cars
going opposite directions, let
alone a third trying to make
a move straight down the middle
at 85 or 90, & me still trying
to remember which side is mine.
& then there they are—the
“fields of Athenry” celebrated
in song and family legend—I
know my grandfather came from
nearby & wonder if these stone
walls and almost treeless views
were ones he knew, the rich
/> green meadows & pastures, the
sheep & cows & occasional bandy-
legged dog looking out on it all
as if it could care less about
the rest of the world, including
me passing by on my way to three
days of leads to “Lallys” who
are no relations—much gossip
of who married whom & church records,
only the wrong church, sending
me to suspicious farmers who
ignore the hand I extend until
they come to understand I don’t
want anything more than the
lore of my family.
I get led on by one who comes off
like Richard Harris in The Field
the movie the folks I’m staying
with say is the one about their
country they found most real—
& so did I—that angry patriarch
so narrow-minded & mean & yet
somehow heroic, reminding me
of my grandfather & what I
remembered of a man who always
seemed to scowl & need a shave
& dress like a bum & have been
drinking, that stinking smell
of alcohol & old worn-for-years-
through-everything-that-mattered
clothes, still sturdy though,
like him the neighbors saw as the
local character, but to us he was
“Himself,” the father of our clan.
And now here I am where he began,
following one false lead after another,
meeting available widows ten years
my senior, whose brothers point out
ruins of peasant huts they swear
is where my grandfather grew up,
the stones so tightly fitted, like
the walls all around this country,
“knitted” as they say, so that
even without mortar or cement they
can withstand water or contain
bulls, except the human ones—
the interlocking shapes & sizes
keeping out the wind & rain while
the thatched roofs equally as
intricate keep the water out too
& the warmth in—these places
fascinate me, each one could be
a place my grandfather knew.
I don’t mind the dead ends
because they all lead to the
kitchens of farmhouses where
everyone seems ready to share
a bottle or some tea and an
anecdote about the ones now
gone across the sea, some never
known or long forgotten, their
children or grandchildren turning
up “back home” so many years later,
like me, here now, trying to uncover
what? the answer to my never being
able to identify with who I was
brought up with & wondering why—
But now I’m sharing some bread or
sandwiches or cakes when they
take me to the oldest living
memory in the neighborhood to ask
“Do you remember any Lallys
in these parts, ones who
went away?” & I say “In the
last century, late 1800s, he
died in 1956” and they reply
“That’s not so long ago, someone
should know if he came back for
visits, as you say, now that’d
be something to remember then,
a Yank coming home in the ’30s
or ’40s would be an event, sure
it would”—& I could almost feel
myself relaxing, something old
& familiar in these scenes, not
just the fear I had of my Irish
grandparents but the closeness—
they were always there, right
down the street, waiting for me
to come & greet them as my mother
always made me do at least once a
week—I only wish I knew then
what I do now so I could have slowed
down those brief encounters &
maybe remember—what?—what
I think I’m feeling now—the
comfort & ease of being at peace
with who you are—I am.
When, through some unacknowledged
or too subtle for my eyes and ears
decision is reached and it’s
time to go, no one remembering
my grandfather “Mike,” someone
suggesting another little place with its
own name despite the fact that it isn’t
on the map & all it means is a handful
of houses more or less close
by each other, and another
peat fire in the kitchen heating
stove, and the best chair, closest
to the heat, to be my place,
and there’s no haste at all
to get on with their farmers day,
& I get the impression these
people would rather talk than
work anyway, & they’d rather
hear a poem recited than talk
& why recite a poem if someone
can sing a song all the way through—
they just know what they like best,
& it seems to be the articulation
of the human mind at rest & glad of it.
Finally I get in touch with “my
brother the priest” as we say,
who has lived in Japan these 30
years or more & who had once
come looking around here maybe
that long ago—he tells me
the place to look is called Bookeen,
another handful of houses where some
relatives lived but with a different
last name, having descended from one
of grandpa’s sisters who stayed
behind, but there is no use
he says looking grandpa up in
the local church because our
Lallys had gone somewhere else,
the “Redemptorist monastery”
a few miles the other way—
& when I tell this to the man of the
house where I am staying, he says
“I know your man, I’m sure he’s
related for his name is Lally &
he lives at Tallyho Cross—” (which
I later learn means crossroads)
“—not far from Bookeen but closer to
Esker”—the Redemptorist place—
& he takes me to see this Paddy
Lally in an old “two story” as
they call them when they are,
“too dilapidated” to invite me
in, he tells my host, so he comes
out to the car instead and gets
in the back and we shake hands
and I see something familiar in
the strength of his nose and
unshaven chin and the look in
his eye and even the way his old
clothes are worn & thick with
accumulated what can I call it
but life? It’s hard to describe
without sounding the way “the
Americans” did when they talked of
my grandfather, only worse,
like a homeless person might
look now, not even that good
in a way, what can I say? he
wears a suit coat that has seen
better days a long long time ago—
obviously he works in it,
lives in it, maybe every day—
but he has a full head of hair
and as much on his upper cheeks
as if he had forgotten to shave
there—later I will discover
>
in a book that it was traditional
for the Irish men of the West to
let their face hair grow and only
shave it for special occasions
but never the hair in their nose
or low on their throat or upper
cheeks, a sign of their connection
to the past, their fathers and
theirs, but now he only looks
like he had missed the hairs
a long time ago—
Anyway, I
say my grandfather’s name was
Michael, like mine, & my father’s
name was James—he says his
father’s name was Frank & I say
I had an uncle Frank, & he says
his grandfather’s name was Pat
& I say my great grandfather’s name
was that, and the other man points
out that my grandfather came back
for visits & wouldn’t he remember
that and Paddy says “Ah, it was a
long time ago” and looks me in
the eye and with a sort of sigh
says, “There was a priest here
once from America, he lived in
Japan, but I never met him”—
“That’d be my brother” I say—
“You know you can go over to
Galway City and find a book on names
that’ll tell you all you’d want to
know about the Lallys, not us though,
but about the name—ah, but
what’s in a name” he goes on “a
rose by any other name would
smell as sweet, wasn’t it Mister
Shakespeare said that—” he doesn’t
really ask, a kind of glow in
his eye as though he’s trying to
put one by me as I smile & reply
“That’s so, Shakespeare said that,
and maybe you’re right, I’m content
to just be here, near where I know
my grandfather came from—it’s enough.”
& then he looks at me again, as if
seeing something else & says real low,
as though throwing it away, “I remember
Mike” & the hairs on the back of
my neck stand up—“he used to take
Patsy Lally into Athenry to the pubs,
Patsy liked his drink, Mike was
alright . . .” and I am home again in
my heart, this is the start of
something bigger than I remembered
or expected, because it is so simple
& so every day, as we sit there in
my host’s little car, Paddy in the back,
the two of them sharing a smoke, Paddy
quiet again, and looking at his big,
gnarly hands and not at us, as my host
begins to figure out the dates & how
it is we are or might be related,
Paddy & me, “. . . aye, then Paddy’s
father is your grandfather’s youngest
brother which would make Paddy here
you father’s first cousin & your
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