Next Stop - Dublin
NEXT STOP : DUBLIN
Glad to leave the stonefaced Russian labyrinth of passports small
And stamped documents for every footfall
A bureaucrat’s wet dream - checking each other’s bureaucracies
No walking on grass, no stepping over invisible fences,
No original thinking, no whistling indoors please.
Engines start to turn and whistle and whine
Soon be back in old school for a while, unmissed, decadent
Teachers like old Rogers, often boozed-up in class, or that arrogant *
Upstart McCabe, getting high on his minority skills, his sacred Irish language.
( Mustn’t say Irish, say Gaeilge.) Important to an ant or midge.
I have met them at close of day, coming with vivid faces **
Flushed with the triumph of outdated, set-in-stone values
Elation gets them higher than smoky inhalation
Their dreamland is a small island, a Gaeilge nation.
I dream of stepping from frying pan to fire
And life begins to seem a hoax
And tiny ants seem large as folks
Their fragile egos higher float with every puff
Tiny magic dragons never seem to get enough
And from their caves they need a coax
East is east, and west is best - but in the final analysis
Maybe not enough in either one to miss
And the caves are filled with fragile ants
Afraid to be seen with ants in their pants.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTES
*These are of course fictitious names.
**This is the opening line from W. B. Yeats’ poem EASTER 1916.
Yeats is probably one of the 20th century’s finest poets in the English language.
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