Gardens of Decayed Vanity

Someone once used the idea of a Japanese garden to explain to me how tiny changes in perspective can mean a profound change in how you see the world. What you see depends entirely on where you are standing, and two people, who may actually be standing quite close to each other, can nevertheless see quite a different landscape, and draw a different meaning, from the same garden. In the case of the Japanese garden, this is something the designer is trying to achieve, making them wonderful places for reflection and contemplation.

I was reminded of that conversation, again, on Saturday afternoon during a visit to the Imperial Burial Vault of the Hapsburg dynasty, the Kaisergruft, in Vienna. Since childhood, I've been fascinated by these places. I'll happily while away the hours reading the inscriptions on tombs and wall plaques in churches, making connections, remembering what I know about the history of the times in which the honoured dead lived out their lives and speculating about what those lives must have been like.

I entered the Kaisergruft with my usual sense of curiosity and wonder, down stone steps to the air conditioned , sacred silence. The first thing you see are a number of identical , polished wooden coffins set in niches and slowly you eye is drawn to the increasingly ornate metal caskets of Emperors , Empresses and Arch Dukes. The grandeur of the caskets builds slowly but steadily as you move deeper into the vaults, like a grand overture. Curiosity is fed by recognition as you connect names with the history of Europe going back to the beginning of the seventeenth century and remember famous deeds, great battles won, bewigged and sashed Josephs, Goya's Maximillian , arms outstretched before a Mexican volley.

And then, something changes. Perhaps the chill of the air conditioner, perhaps a hollow sound on the modern tiles, or maybe the simple , ordered regularity of these sealed tins of decay, lined up behind alarmed railings.

Suddenly my perspective changes. Hushed reverence gives away to a vision of a warehouse of death. "Rottenness and dead men's bones" encased not in whited sepulchers but in polished bronze, copper and gold. Moving deeper and deeper into the vault, the increasing grandeur of the coffins, the grandest being the immense bulk of the baroque monument to Empress Maria Theresa and her husband Franz Stephen, does little to change the perception that this is no more than a storage space for decayed pride and vanity. A handful of smaller coffins, and the beautiful sadness of a child's effigy, causes a moment of pause but does not change my now established perception of this cold shed. Indeed, the strongest emotion they evoke is a sense that they do not belong here , that ironically, they most of all should lie in living earth under grass and blossoms.

The plaque to murdered Franz Ferdinand and his beloved Sophie, who's vein's want of thinning blue blood robbed her of the right to rot in grander company, only serves the underline the futile vanity of this place. Finally, Franz Joseph's stone box flanked by a murdered wife and the shattered remnants of Mayerling's tragedy quicken my step to the stair , the stifling heat of a Vienna afternoon welcome relief from the air conditioned emptiness.

A small change in perspective. A profound change in view.

Vienna

On Saturday I had a leisurely stroll through the Naschmarkt in Vienna. I say leisurely in the sense that I had no particular objective in mind, and time on my hands. However the market itself was an intense hive of activity. At one end, exposed to the blazing sun, huckster stalls sold everything from antique glass to plastic toys, Bakelite records to brass fittings, daggers to ancient sets of surgical instruments, football jerseys to lederhosen and any manner of useful and uselessly lovely junk. Wiley old traders who would not have been out of place in a biblical epic, a Star Wars movie or a Monty Python sketch were perched between other kinds of crafty folk. Young men with slicked hair and mobile phones looked impatient with their trading heritage while gray haired hippies in waist coats, trapped in time, seemed more interested in simply being there, discussing their collected wares than in any thought of commercial gain.

In the food market, the scent of olives, spices, herbs, fish, coffee and countless other delights assailed the senses. All weekend I've searched for words that would capture the sheer abundance of the wares on display. Fruit ripe and bright. Meats, fish, vegetables. Nuts, berries and seeds. Any manner of bread. Great pallets containing spices, peppers and countless varieties of salt in hues of white, pink and orange. Even the word display seemed inadequate. Passive. Moving though the narrow aisles it was as if the goods themselves were animated, calling out in myriad languages to be picked, tasted, squeezed and chosen. I regretted that I wasn't on my way home to cook! Along the way paused for a coffee. A very special coffee that had me thinking that I must acquire one of those little coffee pots and learn the art of making real Turkish coffee. However I suspect that there's some sort of special licensing requirement for handling such potent substances!

After that it was off to the Leopold Museum. I went along originally to have a look at their small Klimt collection and the works of the sadly short lived Egon Schiele. As it happened they were running an exhibition about the Art Nouveau architect and designer Joseph Maria Olbrich. All I have time to say about that is if this is your kinda thing, you have until the 27th September to see a pretty amazing exhibition!

The Swimmer

Tom has no interest in soccer: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. You will therefore permit me to paraphrase Charles Dickens to repeat, emphatically, that Tom Rourke has no interest in soccer. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

Because there was something wonderful to walk home in the heat of a Viennese summer's evening, following the closing stages of Ghana's clash with Uruguay, like Kirk Douglas in "The Swimmer", from bar to bar, past open window's, street side cafe's, garages, huddled security guards and car park attendants, all united in their shared excitement. Even Bacchus's lovers huddled closer and vuvu thrilled to a small screen nestled in vintage shelves and wreathed in the smoke of fine cigars.

Earlier, in a flash of inspiration, I'd scribbled this on a napkin and had a moment of panic when I thought it had joined the cleared plates and empty glasses.

Fuchsias (working title!)

Popping dew damp buds of fuchsia
over scented box.

Pop, the deep pink plumpness.
Another. Please?
My Mother held me up and indulged
my joyful crime.

Pink lanterns with wounded hearts
My ruthless little fingers
Giving premature birth to purple within.

Enough now
As she set me down
on soft crunching gravel.

My hand ripple surfed
The splash topped box
and I toddled to the magical, squeaking, gate
and the mystery of the Laurel Walk.

Words and Music

Its late so I'll be brief, though those who know me, know that being brief is not a natural gift of mine and less so when its late.

After a long day in Stockholm, I began a long journey South to Vienna, where sleep eludes me as its nearly midnight and still 23C.

I changed planes in Heathrow, where chaos reigned, blamed variously on computer failures, missing planes and a broken baggage system. As we sat and sweltered, a girl began to sing, very quietly, almost as if she were chanting. Soft , sweet and low, she continued without seeming to draw breath and very slowly, a little circle of calm radiated out from her. I couldn't see her properly but caught something like a reflection in discrete smiles, and quiet rhythmic nods.

Later, on the plane, the lady sitting next to me opened a folder of sheet music and read, closing her eyes every few minutes and moved in a soft rhythm , lost in music that only she could hear.

I opened the little book of poems I had happened on earlier in the day and lost myself in different songs. I read and reread John Clare's , I Am, and then, perhaps in search of something more uplifting, I found myself reading John Donne's The Sun Rising aloud. Transported to a garden by the sea, rehearsing words to other music.

Tis late.

I Am

I AM! yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

There to abide with my creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

The Sun Rising

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Tyres

You must have hit something pretty hard
And deep.

He eyed the swelling, felt the heat of it.
The other too, you can see the damage.

Later, he'd invited me to feel the scar.
An open wound that tore through what seemed indestructible.

Can you feel it? You were right to be worried.

You must have hit something pretty hard.
And deep.

Later , as I felt the rumble of barely covered pot holes,
where the road climbs out of Rosscarbery through Knocknageehy,
I felt the shock
that left pieces on the road.

Tracks

Yesterday's foray into the sunny byroads of Co. Westmeath , was partly motivated by a search for a lost relic of the Royal Canal. A few years ago, I caught a fleeting glimpse of something that I found surreal and somehow sad. Stranded in the middle of a grassy field was the unmistakable black and white form of an old canal lock gate. Not discarded , but in place, leveling now not the green waters of the canal , but the soil and rock of a midlands meadow.

The image of that lock gate has fascinated me for years. Whatever accident of geography or failed navigation that had taken me past it was neither recorded nor repeated. Still I remembered its proud stillness. Marveled at how its identity of stone and oak, of leaded paint had withstood the indignity of its abandonment, the filling in of a siding no longer relevant, needed or loved.

In an odd way, the lock's land locking seemed to convey a greater sense of movement than one rushing with water. Or should I say, its sturdy limbs seemed to convey a sense of strength and potential like a runner trapped in sand. It was as if its trapped form longed to push its way through the field. Thirsty for green waters and , to quote Kavanagh once more, leafy-love-banks.

I drove and wove my way through country lanes but sadly did not find my lock gate. So perhaps it had finally surrendered to the plough, or found its timbers rendered and shaped to other purposes. Or maybe, in its quiet patient pushing had finally reached the rushing release of green waters.

I did however, find another abandoned relic of the Royal Canal , whose prison shadowed banks Behan sang of. I stood a little while and thought of those who laid this path, so certain of their course.

Canal Bank Walk
Patrick Kavanagh

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal Pouring redemption for me, that I do The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal, Grow with nature again as before I grew. The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third Party to the couple kissing on an old seat, And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat. O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech, Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

Iliad

I was reminded today of Patrick Kavanagh's poem, Epic, and the line "that was the year of the Munich bother". Today , while millions remained indoors to watch the "epic" clash of Germany and England in the world cup (and I have only the word of others to go on, soccer never having been my game) the good people of the parish of Killucan, Raharney and Rathwire, gathered in glorious sunshine to honour their dead.

Other epic contests meant more here and the priest promised to be brief to allow a hasty exit for those scrambling to Dublin to watch Westmeath take on Louth in the Senior Football Championship (real football this time).

Packed between the monuments, high granite crosses in the old part, polished marble in the new, the community and its returning diaspora, prayed, greeted, counted the lost and measured each other's girth ("you're looking well on it" a compliment to assumed prosperity and a sure signal that you'd gained a few pounds since last year).

With a handful of exceptions, I've taken this pilgrimage ever year for over forty years , migrating from the sacred plot where the history of my Mother's people is carved and my earliest childhood memories are interred, to the rapidly filling new plots and the polished granite and exuberant blooms of my Mother's own space. The village now surrounds the graveyard and the faces and voices have changed beyond recognition. Some things however remain the same: the tremulous choir over the loudspeakers; the pride and care each family takes of its plot, and those of long forgotten neighbours; and the ants. Even amidst the polished granite and fresh graveled paths, the ants march and weave between our feet in the sunshine.

Afterwards, I took some time to explore the paths and byroads of the surrounding countryside, something I've been promising myself for years but never quite found the time. Down roads that still brushed the underside of your car with grass growing in the centre, through villages whose hearts seemed unchanged but were now stranded in the midst of housing developments, some filled with Dublin registered cars, some finished but empty, others hoarded fields of broken promises.

Almost by accident, I finally came upon a hill top ruin and a cemetery even older than the one I had known since childhood. I parked and wandered across a lush green meadow to the silence of the overgrown ruins. I looked out over the river and an ancient landscape unmarked by tiger tracks. Somewhere here, beneath my feet, lie the remains of countless Allen's and Fitzgeralds.

This summer they plan to clear it. I plan to help.

So back to Kavanagh, and his Epic of 1938:

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided : who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important ? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said : I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.