Hare-bells for Spring-Joyce

Two dainty hare bells made of bite-mouth china. Hand dipped in milky glaze and two hare paws dipping amongst blue Spring flowers.

Ah, the youth of hares and hare-bells. Their flippant feet pushing and boxing in the March air. Joycean hares twinkling with bell bulbs. Up through the fast dampening black earth. The joyful curve, or arch of a pink-lipped open mouth bell. Green, the snot-green of Joycean seas - a tiny Foxglove mouth all open and ready to ding-a-ling.

Hare-bell hanging under white roses, made of tin. Where the light shines always. Tink and tink and tink again it's a beautiful bird in the sun sometimes. Whenever the darkness finds me, I can swing in the pendulum of tiny china hare-bell swing.

How the hare-bell swells in the lightening year. No frost fallow for me.

Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921

-I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar 11d a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.-

RiverRunsPast

…a tithe of vicar’s plum for the blest James of Airlann, fader thrice-transubstantiate, eater of skillet-blacken kidney, highest-high Moyle of stropper, e’ though poor dead Paddy’s rotting, O’ yew cursed lye, oxen-cart re-crossing the Liffey at dawn, Moylan, reamer of surd, trackman’s stub weaning clove from crown and folly, mounting turret’s arse in excelsior Delores. Happy wee-birthday dearest dear James, adman, and blest be the heckle on the pub of yore neck.

James Joyce meets me in the kitchen

And so it came to pass in the kitchenette, past the towel-rubbing efficiency of hands, past the soda crystals of despair, past the long tongue of a knife edge against skin, ah yes, past all of that, I met dear Jim down in the corner. You see it there? The tiny slither of onion skin there, dear James. The soft lace of spider web and eight legs clasping a lemon pip. No, not a fly dear spider. Not a fly. Just a hard knot or pippy sour. Dear old James, holding my hand down there, like he did. Always on an evening.

Hungry I was. Near starving. Not eaten since 5.30am and worked the day of the Gods. It was so very tiring. It kills me, I whispered in your ear. It near kills me. And to God, I hoped that you would come and lift me up in your arms and say, 'Here, darling, here's a cup of tea, lar.' Or maybe just a tiny morsel to eat. White pudding or something of the sort, with apple jelly. I just sat there, by the freezing cold of iron handles and don't push me hands. I just sat, there by the lonelier than ever before or since. I sat there by that lonelier than ever. It was colder than a Derry day. Whilst all that time where you held me before with the curves of our backs agains the door could still be seen. The steady gasp of a hand-print, yes I can still see it there, or so I thought I could. Perhaps it was just some old slime or jelly of tinned sausage. I flicked it there, that must be it. In a flight of passion, I gripped the can edge. The click of can opener and there it was, jaggedy Anne.

Sometimes I dream of tipping the ripe juice of tomatoes out over my skin. It looks like blood. Ripping open stuck labels of skin from this spot here and raking it. It would look pretty against tomato pips and froth. A mess of vegetable and earthly, bodily matter. Why, you pretty thing, you. How could I treat you so? With your working hard all day and nothing to eat inside your little belly there, slumped under the cooker.

Why do you work so hard? And I hug myself and wonder why the people who seem the happiest are always the saddest of all. You shake me and try to wake me. Just a cold, slumped shoulder of wet flank. And sometimes the imprint of a fingery bruise is all that is there. You say that I am your biddy. I can almost see down on your cheek from here, you used to say.

You don't trust me and I fly up into the air and feel the bite of it all. Ripping at the flex. I wonder how much longer I can hang on, the bleached out face, the used to say eyes. The memory of what I once was.

Past all that, yes, past all that. I sat down next to dear Jimmy and traced the lino with the fingers, as I had done all those years ago at seven. Seven, when the innocence was taken away. Dough ball days of heaven and hell.