A writer's blog of the sublime, surreal, repugnant and redeeming.

This is a writer's blog of the sublime, surreal, repugnant and redeeming, my venture into the great unknown and unknowable.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Poem: The Smell of Ireland


Con Durham, a man full of talent, gentleness and love.
I met and played trad music with him in Daingean ui Chuis.
RIP, angel of music.

The Smell of Ireland
by A.R. Carter

When I first landed there, I noticed the smell;
an odd acrid tang, not unpleasant at all.
New to that place I wondered about it,
and after years couldn’t recall
what life’s like without it.

It’s turf-grates and oak,
Bord na Mona’s thick smoke,
vinegar, sausage and chips.
Dettol and paint, and on feet of a saint
beeswax sweet, and the spice of incense.

The harbour’s rotten hemp rope,
and the lavender soap
on old ladies sitting at mass.
The cough of the bus
with a tourist-full truss
wearing too much cologne
as they pass.

St. James’s Gate stinks of burnt barley malt
with relief found in Howth and its air full of salt.
Botanical treasures await in Glasnevin,
the breath of woodbine heaves its own special heaven.

Steaming tarmac, gooey and black,
is mixed in with cow-pats and green.
Mussels in sand, and the smell of a land
of stone walls and fresh Carraghín.

Silage and stink on February dirt,
blackberries rotten on vines;
bacon and eggs with rich soda bread,
the deep quiet stands of white pines.

Black tar on canvas of curraghs tied down,
the trawlers’ old engine oil,
damp woolen jumpers of men worked to the bone
that smell of tobacco and toil.

The smell of a nation, the dirt-smell of spud,
crimped on the coastline by seaweed and mud.

I didn’t hear jays or the mockingbird’s song,
and when all was right, a piece was still wrong.
Nights caught me off as I gazed on the thickets.
They were velvety deep, with no chirping of crickets.

I imagined them all, and then I recalled,
wood stoves on a morning’s cold hickory pall,
fried country ham on the first day of autumn,
cinnamon, walnut, molasses and pumpkin,
sumac and honeysuckle on a deep summer evening,
cornbread, and Lysol, and homemade fried chicken.

Mom’s cotton quilts kept in old cedar chests,
the whirr of cicadas, the razzing of locusts,
and peeking through snow,
the first purple spring crocus.

Then I remembered what I loved about home.
So I’d think of Nashville,

and pick up the phone.

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