Old God's Time

People endured horrors, and then they couldn’t talk about them. The real stories of the world were bedded in silence.

No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death, as long as they are not dying.

It was not just because he was old, and looked old to them, but because he was a pensioned ghost from the strange past, a pointless survivor, an old soldier of forgotten wars. A remnant, with a torn gansey for a soul.

The burden of getting older was borne alone,

He liked it for its modesty among the bigger efforts. Like a human soul should be in the world, among elephants, galaxies.

To him this was the whole point of retirement, of existence – to be stationary, happy and useless.

Not so many years ago the parish priest would not have let her be buried in hallowed ground. Not any fucking more. No fucking priests allowed instead.

The Irish people. Poor stragglers stuck on the edge of Europe. Took a wrong turn on some ancient landscape. Could go no further and could not go back.

The burden of getting older was borne alone, but also as if by someone else, because he often couldn’t recognise bits of himself he caught in the mirror.

in human affairs everything is hastiness and farewell.

A matter of belief, the first day of spring, like Protestants and Catholics differing over the mother of God.

It would all go on, for ever, the little glories of life.

Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-se immòbil, feliç i inútil

manifest. If he had always in his life felt like the youngest soul in the room, no matter what his age, now he felt the oldest.

Was it not one of the ordinary rewards of love? Crawl with each other to hospital appointments maybe, but also revel in the allotment of days still left. Talk about the children with the reverence and pride of former owners. He could only imagine it. It was given to you either to live, or not to live, there was nothing else.

Of course, unbeknownst to him, he had been brave all his life. That was true, but not true for him.

Getting wind of things, as Tom knew, was what made the world of Ireland go round.

And the black shoes bought in Marlborough Street that declared themselves on the box to be impregnable. You got a little tin of dubbin free with every pair. You might as well wear blotting paper. Ah but sure it was all part of it. Nothing was what it was made out to be. The truth included. The Gardaí. The country.

His bladder was the thief of sleep.

He knew there was almost always comedy stuck in the breast of human affairs, quivering like a knife.

just a schoolboy still but astute in the ways of sorrow.

These strange wars at the end of the long tale of Empire.