Читать книгу Reconstructions - Steafán Hanvey - Страница 17

All Key-Holders Attend … (The Devil’s in the Retail)

No sound needed to hear this one:

Hugh J. O’Boyle’s hardware store is roaring

like a Titanic furnace, going up,

just like t’other went down.

Both would only shine bright the once,

and the very thing that did for the ship

was exactly what these firemen could have done with

on this night to remember.

It’s Downpatrick, 1975, and this evening’s

devil-cast is coming to us live from up there

where Irish Street meets its false summit,

the Folly Lane, just in there on the right,

before giving way to Stream Street.

Before us stands a business on its last legs:

Mid-encore, whipping up a storm,

it’s an all-singeing,

all-dancing flames performance,

awash with pyrotechnics

and musical accompaniment courtesy of

The Ulster Cacophonic Orchestra,

Conductor: Old Nick himself.

The fourth wall is about to be broken

but the audience – no longer able to suspend

its disbelief – is ill-prepared.

The finale, when it comes,

will bring the house down,

confounding the critics once again

while giving encouragement

to dire authors and their impresarios.

*****

As a young pup,

filled with a shameful giddy-delight,

I used to ride shotgun

to such fires with my Da.

Often arriving before the tenders,

we got to see the firemen

tumble down from their cab

and stand in a hands-on-hips tableau,

allowing themselves to be enthralled,

briefly, civilian-like,

by the spectacle before them.

And then how they’d briskly rub their faces

to break the spell, drowning out

all bewitching sounds by shouting

assessments, instructions, and unholy oaths

in accents as thick as any farl

that has ever graced an Ulster fry.

On nights such as these,

The ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ hotline crackled

before going dead.

But most of all, my cheeks remember

the stovish heat, and how my clothes and hair

carried home a thermogenic musk.

*****

Aye, Boyle’s was a Roman candle that night.

After all these years,

it still burns bright in black and white.

Hard to believe this was taken in the Seventies –