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That day we were trapped between chartreuse living room walls and the godly cleanliness of afghans saving sofas and chairs. We were talking about anything except Uncle Carl— gone, how we'd miss him— when Uncle Gus came down the hall and stood in the archway, his wiry body strapped under a black accordion. "Haven't played," he said, "for a long time." So he played a waltz and I squirmed in my chair under the slow flow of grief. He played a polka and I heard my sister clapping lightly for the mourner bending over the keys. His cheek-bones, red as Helgoland's cliffs on the North Sea. Gulls whirled and screamed around the black load on his heart.

This morning in Dingle, the clouds bellied down over the mountains and broke into grey, white, and blue. Winds flagged through the palm trees that the man from the "Big House" brought back to the bay long ago. Up Greene Street, the school kids in their dark uniforms gather on the sidewalk by the Spar store. Long ago, this was a Spanish town, east of the Blasket Islands and west of Connor Pass. The harbor is full of sails. The piper sits in his little shop on the rounding road, selling penny whistles, telling anyone who will listen how many ways there are to vary the sound, how much there is to think of all at once.

She stands by the riverbank, notes from her bagpipes lapping across to us as we wait for the traffic light to change. She does not know we hear— she is playing to the river, a song for the water, the flow of an unknown melody to the rocky bluffs beyond, for the mist that was this morning, shroud of past lives: fishermen and riverboat gamblers, tugboat captains and log raftsmen, pioneer and native slipping through the eddies of time. She plays for them all, both dirge and surging hymn, for what has passed and is passing as we slip into the currents of traffic, the changed light bearing us away.

Wheel of sorrow, centerless. Voices, sad without cause, slope upward, expiring on grave summits. Mournfulness of muddy playgrounds, raw smell of rubbers and wrapped lunches when little girls stand in a circle singing of windows and of lovers. Hearing them, no one could tell why they sing sadly, but there is in their voices the pathos of all handed-down garments hanging loosely on small bodies.

Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning. I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig. I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour. Perhaps you glance at me and think, "What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!" Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud-pies. I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver. With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain. In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.

I was one year old when my nanny went away leaving no memory of a face that watched, arms that held, hands that fed and cleaned me, left no record of her voice or name. My father died, leaving wisps of pipe smoke for a memory. My mother went away to write in London, left me at her home place, Ballyrankin, a sheltered farm in the Slaney river valley. I listened to stories from a paralyzed aunt sitting among sleepy dogs next to the fire. Statia cooked every day for the dining room, churned butter, gave sugared bread to me and her child Bernie, fed outside men in dirty boots and greasy caps in her stone-flagged kitchen that smelt of damp clothes, roasting meat, and cake. I fished for minnows in Shillelagh stream under ash trees where filtered sunlight made pools of silver water. On one side horses grazed and swished their tails at flies, on the far side cows rubbed their backs against low beech tree branches. My mother went away to hospital, left me with English neighbors, the Smythe Vigours’ hairy legs banged on passage floorboards, my bedroom filled with evening sun. They warned against crying. I cried louder. They took my pearl pink rosary beads given to me by a monk from a mountain monastery. He told me Holy Mary answered children’s prayers. A protestant child, I didn’t know the words, but I knew she’d hear me if I could catch the sunlight on her beads.

O thy bright eyes must answer now, When Reason, with a scornful brow, Is mocking at my overthrow; O thy sweet tongue must plead for me And tell why I have chosen thee! Stern Reason is to judgment come Arrayed in all her forms of gloom: Wilt thou my advocate be dumb? No, radiant angel, speak and say Why I did cast the world away; Why I have persevered to shun The common paths that others run; And on a strange road journeyed on Heedless alike of Wealth and Power— Of Glory's wreath and Pleasure's flower. These once indeed seemed Beings divine, And they perchance heard vows of mine And saw my offerings on their shrine— But, careless gifts are seldom prized, And mine were worthily despised; So with a ready heart I swore To seek their altar-stone no more, And gave my spirit to adore Thee, ever present, phantom thing— My slave, my comrade, and my King! A slave because I rule thee still; Incline thee to my changeful will And make thy influence good or ill— A comrade, for by day and night Thou art my intimate delight— My Darling Pain that wounds and sears And wrings a blessing out from tears By deadening me to real cares; And yet, a king—though prudence well Have taught thy subject to rebel. And am I wrong to worship where Faith cannot doubt nor Hope despair, Since my own soul can grant my prayer? Speak, God of Visions, plead for me And tell why I have chosen thee!

Forgive me, soldier. Forgive my right hand for pointing you to the flawless tree line now outlined in my brain. There was so much bloodsky at daybreak in Pleiku, but I won’t say those infernal guns blinded me on that hill. Mistakes piled up men like clouds pushed to the dark side. Sometimes I try to retrace them, running fingers down the map telling less than a woman’s body— we followed the grid coordinates in some battalion commander’s mind. If I could make my mouth unsay those orders, I’d holler: Don’t move a muscle. Stay put, keep your fucking head down, soldier. Ambush. Gutsmoke. Last night while making love I cried out, Hit the dirt! I’ve tried to swallow my tongue. You were a greenhorn, so fearless, even foolish, & when I said go, Henry, you went dancing on a red string of bullets from that tree line as it moved from a low cloud.

tell the flowers—they think the sun loves them. The grass is under the same simple-minded impression about the rain, the fog, the dew. And when the wind blows, it feels so good they lose control of themselves and swobtoggle wildly around, bumping accidentally into their slender neighbors. Forgetful little lotus-eaters, solar-powered hydroholics, drawing nourishment up through stems into their thin green skin, high on the expensive chemistry of mitochondrial explosion, believing that the dirt loves them, the night, the stars— reaching down a little deeper with their pale albino roots, all Dizzy Gillespie with the utter sufficiency of everything. They don't imagine lawn mowers, the four stomachs of the cow, or human beings with boots who stop to marvel at their exsquisite flexibility and color. They persist in their soft-headed hallucination of happiness. But please don't mention it. Not yet. Tell me what would you possibly gain from being right?

Please marry me. Your mother likes me. —Line spoken by an unknown woman, in a dream We are stretched out on a dingy sofa, and I think I must be barefoot because a woman whom no one knows Is massaging the ankle of one leg of mine and the instep Of the other, all this toward morning, and I have that Occasional epiphany one has while still asleep That I am floating down a river Because I am so happy and all the dismal issues Have been made tractable at last, and so I say to her That the late symphonies of Gustav Mahler Are more lucid if you’re sitting close to, and above, The orchestra, so that you can see the contrapuntal Lines moving from strings to woodwinds And then back again, whereupon this woman, Sitting (I now realize) at my feet, says, in the full Heat of our dream life, and in that happiness, “Please marry me. Your mother likes me,” And so I wake, not laughing, although my mother Has been dead for over thirty years, but in wonderment Over what quality this dream-woman must have owned To have pleased my mother so that she, My late mother, would have said, despite her ban On ordinary pleasantries, that she had liked someone, Anyone, who might have cared for me, and as I lie In bed I think of the last movement of Mahler’s Ninth When the melodic lines go quiet for minute after minute In a prolonged farewell to music and to life, Which my mother would attend to in her bathrobe Late at night, the stereo turned up, blended whiskey In her highball glass mixed with milk as a disguise, Leaning back, hand over eyes, silent-movie style Like Norma Desmond listening as Von Stroheim plays The organ wearing his white gloves. No, it wasn’t Mahler, it was Schoenberg,Verklärte Nacht, Moon-drunk music, mad and inconsolable.