Dublin

December 29, 2007

Delta found and delivered my bag, and the concierge, as he was carrying it up to my room for me–an unnecessary service, but one he would not be denied– explained that a lift could not be installed because the building is of historical significance, an honor bestowed on it by the birth of Gogarty. I said, “Could it have been in my very room?” and he said, “Not unless you start writing poetry in there.”

Visited the Hugh Lane, where there are nice drawings, and where you can get somebody else’s shoes at the door to wander around in. Then it was off to the National Gallery, and then I wandered sections of Georgian Dublin I had not seen before, and most of which seems to be To Let. Cold, but not unbearably so, the sky easing out a little rain although it seemed bright and cloudless. The Dead Zoo, the Natural History Museum is “Closed Until Further Notice.” Jack Yeats has his own gallery in the National now, low-roofed, rather solemn, rather like the interior of an old sailing ship. It seems wrong to me, somehow. I’d been feeling a little dreary, a little solemn myself, but my heart lightened the minute I began to cross St. Stephan’s Green. It was, amazingly, alive with flowers, narcissus and acanthus and a pale white blooming tree, and purple groundcover I did not know, and at the edge of the park a robin was singing with all his heart, and a little boy asked me what I was looking at, and I pulled out my one dependable fragment of Gaelic, spidog.