Benburb

Again apologies for the non update. I've been working flat out on the house and school. The house is looking better than ever. I've now only my room, the study and the bathroom to do. Everything else is now under incredible control. I've camped for the last two weeks in IKEA, developing what was unkindly termed a box fetish. It is partly true, since i have been eyeing the largest box in IKEA for weeks now and on Thursday i finally had the excuse to buy it as i needed the space to put in Darth Vadar's mask, the Millenium Falcon, a safari helicopter and a digger. I'd say it's value for money, don't you?

I must take photos of the house now and all the bits i've organised. Just so that Ma can look at it.

Today i went for this BBC meeting in Armagh and then to Benburb where Peter is taking a Bhuddist retreat now. Benburb is this incredible place. I should have taken photos, but the loooocals might have not appreciated it. It has this huge Gothic building which should have been called North Hanger Abbey, but is called the Priory. Strangely enough, it is occupied by monks. I through Priories were supposed to be for women, but there you go. Inside the Priory time has stood still. It is 1950s Ireland - they even still serve salad cream, a substance i believe is now banned for being too sour, sweet, gloopy and oily. I love it though and so stole a slice of bread and had a salad cream sandwich. There are these lifesized statues of all manner of saints and Jesuses. They have that brown patina of age which conveys both patience and resignation. You can hear them sighing as you gaze at their sad, liquid eyes. What are they looking at, i wonder. Just past my shoulder, over my shoulder, into the distance, as if they can forsee the many years which had past and those to come. The ghostly silence of clairvoyants who have seen it all. The comings and goings across the canteen's many years.

The chairs were covered in a thin red velveteen. With the dark stained wooden floors, and dark stained wooden ceiling, it felt like the inside of a vessel, a ship. It made the early evening light that slipped in through the wide, innocent windows even more translucent and transient. I felt temporal, a husk, a time traveller. Unseen. A moult, projection, hologram. My being here was inconsequential in an objective, unpersonal way. Like that cyclist in Larkin's poem - what is left after religion has gone? Weeds, the sky, a few fallen stones that pass as ruins.

I also bought a willow basket. It was a split willow basket and i probably paid too much for it. But i was paying too for the wooden stove by which it sat, waiting for me all these years. I was paying for the delicate iron wrought glasshouse, splintering and corroding, which it contemplated all the winters and summers that rose and set over the gardens. For the scent of tree, and the dust that had settled in between its folds. For the blunt, calloused hands of Alison, its maker. Her frank but timid manner, which was welcoming but awkward. I was paying for the romance of Benburb.

In the cafe, just up from the artists' cottages, we had Irish stew and sausages and chips. The potatoes were floury and soft, while holding the memory of their shapes. The potter's brother ran the cafe. It was 5 when we called it. That witching time between bistro and restaurant. Hi, are you still open, i asked. He smiled and said, just about. What can we get you? It was a real invitation, not some utterance muttered through his teeth and we were made to feel at home. The decor was cutteing edge contemporary, or totally timeless. Cherry blossom, crysanthemum, lotus, bamboo torn, shorn wallpaper. Wooden blocks for children. A sensible highchair. Leather seats. But in an unpretentious, untrying way. The highlight, these quirky deliciously galzed sugar holders made by the potter himself. Crooked cups which felt exquisite to hold. Firm, delicious, erotic. It was as if the cup was holding you, not the other way round. Turquoise, pink, gold, purple, chocolate, leaf green,. How did he get those glazes? It was magic - but better. Like his studio that we toured. There were no cups. He's going through this vase phase, explain Sean, the chef, who had now changed into his checkered trousers to get ready for dinner service.

Benburb. The karma there, i'd question it, a friend said. So much of blood, so much killing. Across those peaceful fields, the time came and went, washed and swashed, and i could see it - momentarily, and then, it was gone. Only the hawthorns and ashes, the cypresses descending, like the rain. And the woodsmoke rising, into the grey, distances of skies.

Church Going

(excerpt)
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.