Gaeltacht

Gaeltacht

for Liam Brady

Bartley Costello, eighty years old,
sat in his silver-grey tweeds on a kitchen chair,
at his door in Carraroe, the sea only yards away,
smoking a pipe, with a pint of porter beside his boot:
'For the past twenty years I've eaten nothing only
periwinkles, my own hands got them off those rocks.
You're a quarter my age, if you'd stick to winkles
you'd live as long as me, and keep as spry'.

In the Liverpool Bar, at the North Wall,
on his way to join his children over there,
an old man looked at me, then down at his pint
of rich Dublin stout. He pointed at the black glass:
Is lú í an Ghaeilge ná an t-uisce sa ngloine sin'.

Beartla Confhaola, prime of his manhood,
driving between the redweed and the rock-fields,
driving through the sunny treeless quartz glory of Carna,
answered the foreigners' glib pity, pointing at the
small black cows: 'You won't get finer anywhere
than those black porry cattle'. In a pub near there,
one of the locals finally spoke to the townie:
'Labhraim le stráinséiri'. Creidim gur choir bheith
ag labhairt le stráinséirí'. Proud as a man who'd claim:
'I made an orchard of a rock-field,
bougainvillea clamber my turf-ricks'.

A Dublin tourist on a red-quarter strand
hunting firewood found the ruins of a boat,
started breaking the struts out &#x02005.13; an old man came,
he shook his head and said:
'Áá, a mhac: ná bí ag briseadh báid'.

The low walls of rock-fields in the west
are a beautiful clean whitegrey. There are chinks between
the neat stones to let the wind through safe,
you can see the blue sun through them.
But coming eastward in the same county,
the walls grow higher, darkgrey:
an ugly grey. And the chinks disappear:
through those walls you can see nothing.

Then at last you come to the city,
beautiful with salmon basking becalmed black below
a bridge over the pale-green Corrib; and ugly
with many shopkeepers looking down on men like
Bartley Costello and Beartla Confhaola because they
speak in Irish, eat periwinkles, keep
small black porry cattle, and on us
because we are strangers.

Gaeltacht

a Liam Brady

Bartley Costello, ochenta años de edad,
sentado en una silla en la cocina y vestido de tweed gris plateado,
en su puerta, en Carraroe, el mar a unos pocos metros de distancia,
fumando una pipa, y un vaso de cerveza oscura a un lado de su bota:
'durante los pasados veinte años no he comido otra cosa que
caracoles de mar que yo mismo he sacado de aquellas rocas.
Tú tienes la cuarta parte de mi edad, si continúas comiendo caracolillos
vivirás tanto como yo y serás tan vigoroso como yo'.

En el Bar Liverpool, en la North Wall,
mientras caminaba hacia donde estaban su hijos,
un anciano me miró y luego miró hacia su vaso lleno
de rica cerveza negra de Dublín. Señalando el vaso negro dijo:
'Is lú í an Ghaeilge ná an t-uisce sa ngloine sin'.

Beartla Confhaola, en la flor de su juventud,
conduciendo desde las amapolas rojas a las zonas rocosas,
conduciendo a lo largo de los soleados y desolados campos de cuarzo de Carna,
le respondió al condescendiente extranjero, señalando hacia
las pequeñas vacas negras: 'en ningún lugar hallará algo más fino
que ese ganado negro nuestro'. En el bar cerca de allí,
uno de los lugareños finalmente le habló al forastero que venía de la ciudad:
'Labhraim le stráinséiri'. Creidim gur choir bheith
ag labhairt le stráinséirí'. Orgulloso como un hombre que asegurara:
'de una zona rocosa he hecho una huerta,
las buganvillas trepan mis niaras'.

Un turista...