The Ale House

Half way between Ballyferriter and where?

…Gallarus, I suppose.

There was the inn

Where two white roads crossed

Expected in its place,

Although I had not been that way before.

Long low-cabin with four doors

And at each end they were flung wide open

So the setting sun was an eye

Right along the dark bar.

I bent under the threshold.

Steps down to a black floor and my weary legs

Were earthed as I came to,

And the host, his arms spread like a lintel,

Welcomed me with a glass of peat and cream,

As if I had returned from America, or come back after another life,

Unexpected.

His smile was slow as bee-song.

But among my memories there was never one

Of standing before him in this lodge.

They had all been drinking a long time -

Lags in the corners colluding,

An old woman on her three-legged stool,

Even the beer-keeper himself

Who doled me drinks free-handed

And wouldn’t take my coins.

Something should have told me,

As midsummer’s eve honeyed

Through one doorframe and out of the other,

But I found I had a new friend by my side,

A curly boy, tall and full of sea songs.

He told me how the bones of the innkeeper’s grandfather lay under the floor.

Looking down I saw flagstones, or fresh beaten clay,

… I could no longer tell.

‘His grandfather’s bones?’ I must have been half-drunk.

‘Yes, or some other ancestor,’ he replied.

Then he considered the amber light on the rim of his tumbler.

‘Or perhaps his own bones are buried there … the landlord’s I mean.’

Behind the bar the fear an tí gave me his grin

And topped my glass again.

‘A knife is clutched by the grave-dweller,’ he chipped in.

‘Bronze I believe. Or flint maybe. Sharp anyways.

It stakes this hostel to the land at its heart-crux

Where the roads meet.

Or else it might wheel away,

On a high night like this.’

There was laughter then and a hook in the beam above the fire

Where a cauldron might swing.

I took the road for the coast and did not look back.

Steven O’Brien