Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels. — Seferis, Mythistorema
for J. G. Farrell
Even now there are places where a thought might grow — Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned to a slow clock of condensation,
Indian compounds where the winds dance lime crevices behind rippling rain barrels, dog corners for bone burials; and in a disused shed in Co. Wexford,
deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel, among the bathtubs and the washbasins a thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole. or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire? So many days beyond the rhododendrons with the world revolving in its bowl of cloud, they have learnt patience and silence listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.
They have been waiting for us in a foetor of vegetable sweat since civil war days, since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure of the expropriated mycologist. He never came back, and light since then
is a keyhole rusting gently after rain. and once a day, perhaps, they have heard something — a trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.