ESP.LITERATURE

(NAY PLACE AKIN TA ROAM)

No matter, I sez, no matter how so much ya travail, aint no place like Roam, givin him a grin for me cleverness.

No fishin plaice in Nome, sez he contrarily, tall lanky fellow, disheveled, dirty he be. Junk fish, bottom feeding worm eatin flat fish with that pukishlike yellow blind side, mushy stuff, tastes like soggy  cardboard.

Some fella ought to lend him a wash, curry comb be good, take the hide off the lout, so I tinks, no matter, got no tooth anyways, hair a wisp of a straggle. Place, I sez to him, a place for everythingy, it is, and everythingy in its place. Place.

Eh?

Daft jackleg bastard.

Place, I sez louder.

Áit, is it?

So it is. 

Well, ya dont got to be shoutin at me like I be some deaf cod. Heard ya the first time, he sez. Tinkin, I wuz.  Got me a cousin, see, name of Rhome, runnin a fat index finger back and forth, forth and back, cross his columella, veined bulbous nose waggin like some small dog hankerin for a bone. Got the iron rails laid troo Cherokee County, Texas that were, cowboys and injuns, he did, mother was a Crandall same as me. Town named after him, it wuz, Rhome, Texas. Why’d ya ax anyways?

Ya thick tongued lout, who’s axin me sorry ass comin up hind like.

Questin wuz yers, it wuz.

It weren’t neither. Said it straight out. [sings, growly basso profundo] no matter how ya grumble thar’s no place for me eyes but Roam. Jabbin with a stumpy index finger, I sez,  there, like it or lump it. Caint say fairer than that. No sense in ya actin all chowder headed, ya lamebrained yobbo, the place where you wuz buildin yer noamhóg, if ya but remind yerself, that boat that took water like some craw sick catlick with eyes like two fag holes in a blanket.

Nay no never no more I’ll go a roamin, he sings out startlin like, a lilting tenor of surprisin resonance, and the words, struck dumb I wuz by their clarity, the man’s electrocution indecent. Twas shorter than thought propper, that boat, he sez, all the wood we had, stretch of cloth, half empty pot of bitumen, singed me eyes, it did, a four hander I called her, that I could stuff in the back of the old veain with its tight little transam wagglin behind. We rowed her from Dingle to Beenbawn no more than a mile or so, give or take, on the gloomy Tursday with tunder out in the gloomins and whiskey in our bellies to sausage the fear in our hearts. Maolaign, it was, what you was meanin to say, the Jameson’s done us up for fools, that day, head noddin. Shippin water we were, through the Blind …

Stella and Charlie Bliss, it wuz, ya pedancin imposer …

happy as clams to beach the boat …

but yer  talkin through yer nose if ya tink yer Dingle is all that much different than me Cork. Maolaign be maolaign. You sez ‘mwee’ like a whining hungry gull and we say ‘mway-ig,’ and its tomato-tomahto, couldn’t slip a sliver through the difference, shruggin, I claps him on the shoulder to exclaim the point I wuz makin; but he wuz off on a fancy …

… where she drowned, she did, me greatgrandfather’s great aunt, rowin that old eight hander, petticoats dragged her down they did, there in the picture plain fer any fool to see, born on the Great Blasket, she wuz, died with plenty of company just where that Armader ting sunk off the old pier at Dún Chaoin  with her 300 crew all nought but bits for the crabs they be, laid a plaque out on the bluff or somewheres for nobody to see. Tink it be a bit of that revivisection history, if ya follow my drift, weren’t just one boat, anyways, were tree, after gettin whipped by them English pigs coming here to hide and lick their wounds, they were.

Yuv misplaced us, Sunny Jim, we wuz nowhere near …

One of the ancient Mac Ragh naills, ya see, Vikings they wuz, name meaning ‘son of the gods,’ puttin me in fair to middlin company, I’d say …

Yer puttin the cart before the cow if its that grainy black and white over yer side board, her head circled, just pushin off, cow standin arse forward, if that be the one, didn’t fall out of the boat with her dainties all flyin atall, she never, ya told me so yerself, got kicked by the cow in the coracle landin on the little Blasket, brought her back to Dunquin and buried her with a bit of stone fer markin her place where we been not tree years past, if ya but recall the day, rainin like a tree bladdered bullock pissin on a flat rock.

She never, not her, that be her sister from someplace east of Killarney, red headed woman ran off with that O’Brien fella, tanner he wuz, to the fishyards o Baltimore where he took up the mendin and tarrin of nets …

The colonies yer talkin now is it, flea in a frying pan, ya are …

… but come back quick like for the stink ta get kicked by a cow lyin, she wuz, flat on her back in the slime of the shallows …

In Baltimore ya say?

Drowned a woman in a tub with his bare hands, so they say, took ship to Baltimore, the Rome of the U. S. of A, so-called, where me cousin run into him just before he choked on a fish bone down the wrong pipe and croaked.

Yer cousin? I never hard a ting of it. Yer …

Nay, that O’Brien fella. Cryin in his beer he wuz, heartsick longin for home be the short of it, died on the floor of the Tiber Hotel, scullery maid went mad with despair, she did, for the tanner had worked her hide, he had, promisin to take her back when he went, provin beyond the shadow of a misty doubt that every journey has just the one destination and that be home.

Ah, there, now you’ve got the inklin. ‘… be it ever so ailin …’ with the tenor comin in sweet as sin, joinin me in the refrain, he did, singin like a coupla fellas lost to the fairies, voices raised anywheres just shy of high C,  ‘ … nay place to match yer baile …’ arms wrapping shoulders, heads thrown back howlin then like banshees, him sayin bal-ya and me sayin bally, fer the many miles between his place and mine.

No matter, I tell ya, just mo cara and me, it wuz, crackin jokes with the frogs.