The Bloomsday Piece for sure

The Bloomsday Piece for sure

 . . . so of course I'm working in the garden, in the heat and the wetness, the perspiration I'm meaning, and the thorns of life, or thorny desire, or whatever thorns they be, squeezing my heart like Jesus himself in the garden of his agony or St. Francis fighting off one temptation or another to be sure, I mean, obviously, I'm thinking that it's Bloomsday, and I need to write a piece. 

     Well then I wrote a song for the day already but I couldn't seem to get around to recording it in time to send it out the friends of mine who might be that true-hearted that they'd give it a listen and I mean a real listen not just load it down to their i-pill and swallow it later at some leisure that we all know is not coming any time soon. 

     It's a lovely song, if I may say so and I'm saying so presently so I'm just that sure I may. It says "I kissed a girl in Dublin town/upon the mouth upon the ground/upon the dirty cobbled streets/just 'round from Trinity." And it goes on of course. More than a little sad, I'd say. Perhaps a little mad. And probably a bit too salacious for the Jesuits in the audience. But on the other finger, songs are always more than what they say. Or, if I may Aristotle it, songs always say more completely (what with words, and tunes, and instruments, and silent stops, not to mention a living breathing human being) than the words say standing alone, like the two lovers of the song who for a time, maybe just a night, found a love that held off the bitches of time and abandonment and regret. And it was worth a song. Worth the poetry. And worth losing, if anything is. 

     But that's not what I'm here to say from the hot garden of today. And by the way, of course I know that someone or more of you out there will be just so witty to point out that today is no such Bloomsday for Bloomsday has passed like the rose of the beauty and youth we used to know when still in our swaddling clouts. I will say to such a man, for I have the grace to think that no lady among you would every stoop to say such a thing, that of course my good man I'm no idiot. No blogger or Protestant either for that matter. And I'll foight the man who says that I am any or all of the three. It may not be your Bloomsday any more, and I'll be more than pleased to let you think so. But Oi was dreaming through most of yesterday. And, saying the same thing another way, writing the poetry. And any man who thinks that Bloomsday is something else besides dreaming and poetry is a feckin' Jesuit or lawyer, or what's worse than either, a professional writer paid by the inch as if writing weren't in blood. And payment weren't in well drawn stout and maybe a sip of the Jamesons on occasion. 

     What I am here to say, if you'll just be so good to let me finish: I will be as happy as an immigrant who's found a job on Talbot St to send you the song when I'm done recarding it, but you'll have to pretty please because I'm just that tired of  sending things out to payple who then simply forget it as if it were their last confession and go on about their business like they haven't been given a gift. Because that's exactly what it is, isn't it? I don't say how good the quality. But then I wouldn't send it if I thought it was beneath the golden level of friendship; that's something you can take to the bank (or even to the church, if you can find one where folks still gather). So what I'm saying, and I think it bears saying on occasion both for myself and for my fellows in the ministry of the mystery (of course I'm meaning the Daedalian company of which I'm proud to say I'm a member)--you don't always have to pay up; but for god's sake, speak up friends and lovers.

     Sure it's work enough to bring Aphrodite herself or that lovely deer you saw in the field or even the poor thing of little dead cardinal bird being devoured by worms even as I discovered it, I say hard enough to conjure these right here among us in stone or metalwork or with crushed color on canvas. But how much harder with nothing but syllables, and stops, and moans (no doubt the source of every vowel the world has ever known) and memories of birdsongs and, of course, the whole damned history of making, and breaking, and love, and grief, and overwhelming beauty, to bring, that is, something like lightning or ecstasy or hope or even blessed discontent into the world from something so light and tenuous and, yes of course I won't argue about it, maybe ridiculous. 

     So, it's Bloomsday. And if you think it isn't, we'll just step out back and I'm thinking you'll soon be seeing it my way. And I'll be sure to mention it at confession and to visit you at the public hospital. And what I'm saying, if it's not yet clear as crystal, if you'd like to hear my song about Dublin and, I dare say, if you'd like to have your sweet heart broken (if, of course, you're not a sour-hearted Jesuit or a member of the New York Knickerbockers), then you'll kindly be asking for it. I don't say begging. But please and thank you will always get you somewhere. Maybe a long walk on the pier at Dan Laoghaire. 

     And good company you'd be with.