Dublin in July

Dublin in July

When the self advances toward the ten thousand things, that is called delusion;

When the ten thousand things advance toward the self, that is called enlightenment.

—Eihei Dogen, Genjokoan

The Four Courts bear the heat of late July
And down Dame Street the buses wheeze and belch
Their foul exhalations, wearing ads
For Women on the Verge of hrt
And images of lissome men and women
Vacationing in Portugal and Spain.
Whatever I was thinking when that siren
Erupted from the din, its two notes blaring,
Was gone before I knew it, leaving only
A quick impression of a speeding engine,
A red-faced driver screaming out his window,
The heads and shoulders of pedestrians
Turning to watch the swiftly passing show.
Where is the stillness at the heart of things?
Where the silence? Here in the midst of movement,
My own unquiet mind pursuing Dogen's
Notion that the hungry, angry self
Advancing toward the world creates delusion,
I listen for that stillness and that silence,
As though they might be heard in horns and sirens.

2

Take a walk down South Great George's Street,
Where seedy bars and not-so-great hotels
Consort with trendy restaurants and shops,
And India commingles with Japan.
Here is a laundry, there an Oxfam outlet.
And everywhere the crowds, the jostling shoulders,
The cell phone bleating from a stylish belt.
Tonight we'll dine at Yamamori Noodles,
Tomorrow eat panini at the Bailey
Or chicken tikka at the Shalimar.
What has become of that revered imagined
Dublin of O'Brien and O'Faolain,
Its taste as Irish as a ball of malt?
Look for it in Liverpool or Boston
Or conjure it yourself from pints of Guinness.
But here beware of Vespas when you cross
This street that's no more Irish than its name,
Where traffic comes in rolling tidal swells
But now and then grows still, as if recalling
The ochre ethos of a slower time.

3

The self advances to its hiding place,
This table where unnumbered pints of Guinness
Have left their autographs in broken crescents.
Revenants of raconteurs and poets—
O'Brien, Behan, Cronin, Kavanagh—
Come back to haunt this visitor, whose thirst
Is not so much for witty conversation
As for a stillness strangely to be found
Amidst the clinks of glasses and the slow
Sustained consumption of a ball of malt.
High windows lend an air of the cathedral
And shed a friendly though impartial light
On malice and benevolence alike,
As though the bygone boos and panegyrics,
The lurid gossip and the florid tales
Of reputations won and quickly lost,
Were so much dust now settled in its corner,
However bright its colors at the time,
However real its presence in this room.