Dublin 4

March 10, 2020

Sometimes rain, sometimes clear Delft blue. Wandered up Grafton Street into St. Stephen’s Green, where I had spiritual encounters with the coot and the moorcock and the swan and the holy gray heron and lovely Old World diving ducks (black and white with a blue bill on the male) I didn’t know the name of. Talked with a Japanese girl studying in Denmark, who had never seen a heron, she said, but conceded that storks appear in Japanese art. Talked with a couple from Virginia whose first day in Ireland this was. Was photographed—rather extensively—by two girls doing a photo-essay on “People in Ireland.” I told them I was an American, but it was all right since I was, in fact, in Ireland. I think my purple hat attracts attention.

            

All right, I concede that Irish men are, by and large, the homeliest in Europe. It never mattered to me.

            

Stephen and I have lunch. I am happy. We talk about our lives. A great circle that began in 1995 bends slowly to a meeting and a close.

            

Walk before evening up one side of the Liffey and down the other. I am happy. Clouds of gulls dive for crumbs of bread.

The Virginia Festival of the Book has been cancelled.

Went to the New Theater to see Killing Grandpa, a play about the battle between Balor and Lugh. I love all that ancient Celtic mythology, but couldn’t figure how you could do the Battle of Moytura with two actors on a stage the size of an American kitchen. Turned out actually to be pretty wonderful.  Realized that I met the director of the theater in his opening season in 1997, when he was handsome and arrogant and had bright colored shoes. I mentioned all this to him, and he wondered at my memory. Maybe I’ll find the relevant journal passage and send it to him.