September 2013

Dún Laoghaire

If a moment was a thing with weight, if it was an object with properties befitting of the time, this one could be a cannon ball. Loaded, heavy, and slow to fire. Everyone wonders whether the fuse will stay lit. No one knows what would happen should it ignite.

This moment in the world weighs heavily with the impending US congressional vote of military intervention in Iraq Syria.

This moment in Ireland weighs heavily with the closure of many threads of our history.  Today wraps up an epic summer, the kind the word 'loinnir' was made for--resplendent, if you like. Blue skies and lazy days numbered more than we're used to these past few months.

But today one hundred years ago, Dubliners were bristling at the indignation of the police battering young and old on O'Connell Street the day before. Workers of this city, disease-ridden and rat-infested in that time, were striking, locked out of their places of work.

Men were heeding Jim Larkin's call to arms against the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary. The Irish Citizens' Army was born out of these days and weeks.

Yeats wrote 'September 1913' in response to the Dublin Lockout, where he lauds Emmet and Tone, and expresses his contempt for the ruling class. This is where the famously haunting verses are repeated with subtle variation:

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

This moment weighs heavily in part because the loss of Séamas Heaney is fresh on our minds. Many are drawing parallels between him and Yeats, maybe for lack of anything more creative to say. Allow me to draw another in choosing 'Requiem for the Croppies'. Like 'September 1913', this poem responds to another military failure on the road to an Irish Republic, one of the earliest. I love how these verses dance with Yeats':

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave. 

This moment in America weighs heavily because it's not just another Labour Day Weekend. It's an opportunity to think about how the labour movement the world over has defined the expectations of every man in every country. Without them, we would draw no lines at work. Child labour, poor conditions, long hours, low wages, no holidays, no weekends, racial and gender inequality would be part of the job. They would be 'how it is'. and we would crack on with it.  

Strikers, rebels, fighters, poets, musicians, martyrs, and hard-liners are the people who changed it, many of whom are unknown to the cynics, and the same were reviled in their time. On this day in 1913, the Irish Independent had this to say about the events that took place the day before.

'A deliberate attempt is being made to establish a reign of ruffianism in the city. Out of the reeking slums the jail birds and most abandoned creatures of both sexes have poured to vent their hatred upon their natural enemies, the police. Strikers there are amongst them. But the legions of the work-shy have not, we may be sure, emerged from their hiding place to put up a fight for any claims of labour, legitimate or the reverse. They are out for devilry and loot.'

Living in Ireland, living in the world, the echoes of this cynicism can be heard all over, at any given time if you want. These are soundbites, reactions, hot momentary bursts of steam. When faced with the future, this heavy moment should be a chance to look for the long view, the cool... to aim the cannon the right way or diffuse it altogether as the case may be. I want to end with two attempts to find the cool, by way of a quote, and a poem I wrote in the July heatwave when the beer was flowing and I was having this conversation with myself alone.

'A hero is someone who rebels against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them, but obviously that can only work at moments; it can't be a lasting thing. But that's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Who knows? Some day we might conquer death.'-Jim Morrison

At The Stag's Head, By The Barrel

Somehow a century that

Started with moving feet is

Ending with sleeping arses.

When a patch of sunshine

Flip-flops and a ninety-nine

Leaves the dog to lie

When shaking the swear box

And folding up a newspaper

Is how this night begins

I would like it if we were

The bubbles rising

In this amber:

The bitter taste in

The glib gob of every

Good mannered faker.