Solar Bones. Mike McCormack
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alone here for four hours
four hours till she returns so
there must be some way of filling the span of time that now spreads out ahead of me, something to cut through this gnawing unease because
the paper
yes
that’s what I’ll do
the daily paper
get the keys of the car and drive into the village to get the paper, park on the square in front of the chemist and then stand on the street and
this is what I will do
stand there for as long as it takes for someone to come along and speak to me, someone to say
hello
hello
or until someone salutes me in one way or another, waves to me or calls my name, because even though this street is a street like any other it is different in one crucial aspect – this particular street is mine, mine in the sense of having walked it thousands of times
man and boy
winter and summer
hail, rain and shine so that
all its doors and shop-fronts are familiar to me, every pole and kerbstone along its length recognisable to me
this street a given
this street is something to rely on
fount and ground
one of those places where someone will pass who can say of me
yes, I know this man
or more specifically
yes, I know this man and I know his sister Eithne and I knew his mother and father before him and all belonging to him
or more intimately
of course I know him – Marcus Conway – he lives across the fields from me, I can see his house from the back door
or more adamantly
why wouldn’t I know him, Marcus Conway the engineer, I went to school with him and played football with him – we wore the black and gold together
or more impatiently
I should know him, his son and daughter went to school with my own – we were on the school council together
or more irritably
of course I know him – I lent him a chainsaw to cut back that hawthorn hedge at the end of his road and
so on and so on
to infinity
amen
the basic creed in all its moods and declensions, the articles of faith which verify me and upon which I have built a life in this parish with all its work and rituals for the best part of five decades and
this short history of the world to brace myself with
standing here in this kitchen, in this grey light and wondering
why this sudden need to rehearse these self-evident truths should press so heavily upon me today, why this feeling that there are
thresholds to cross
things to be settled
checks to be run
as if I had stepped into a narrow circumstance bordered around by oblivion while
looking for my keys now
frisking my pockets and glancing around, only to see that
Mairead has beaten me to the job, she has been out early and bought the papers – not one but two of them, local and national, both lying in the middle of the table neatly folded into each other, the light glossing unbroken across their surface, making it clear she has not read them herself that I might have the small pleasure of opening up a fresh newspaper, hearing it rattle and creak as it discloses itself, one of those experiences which properly begin the day or the afternoon as is the case now, turning it over and leafing through it
starting at the back, the sports pages, to read the headline
Hard Lessons in Latest Defeat
as if this were the time and the place for a sermon
which prompts me to close it again quickly, not wanting any homily at this hour of the day with the paper showing the date as
November 2nd, the month of the Holy Souls already upon us, the year nearly gone so
what happened to October
come and gone in a flash, the clocks gone back for winter time only last week and
the front-page stories telling that the world is going about its relentless business of rising up in splendour and falling down in ruins with wars still ongoing in foreign parts – Afghanistan and Iraq among others – as peace settlements are being attempted elsewhere – Israel and Palestine – while closer to home, the drama is in a lower key but real nonetheless – bed shortages in hospitals and public sector wage agreements under pressure – all good human stories no matter how they will pan out, you can feel that, the flesh and blood element twitching in them, while at the same time
in the over-realm of international finance other, more abstract indices are rising and falling to their own havoc – share prices, interest rates, profit margins, solvency ratios – money upholding the necessary imbalances so that everything continues to move ever forward while on one of the inside pages there is
one year on
a long article with an illustrative graph and quotes outlining the causes and consequences of our recent economic collapse, a brief résumé of events that culminated on the night of September 29th, feast of the archangel Michael – the night the whole banking system almost collapsed and the country came within a hair’s breadth of waking the following morning to empty bank accounts and
for clarity’s sake
this article is illustrated by a sidebar which gives some indication of just how outsized the nation’s financial folly was in the years leading up to the collapse, debt piling up till it ran to tens of billions, incredible figures for a small island economy, awe-inspiring magnitudes which shifted forever the horizons of what we thought ourselves liable for and which now, stacked on top of each other like this – all those zeroes, glossy and hard, so given to viral increase – appear like
the indices and magnitudes of a new cosmology, the forces and velocities of some barren, inverse world – a negative realm that, over time, will suck the life out of us, that collapse which happened without offering any forewarning of itself, none that any of our prophets picked up on anyway as they were
all apparently struck dumb and blind, robbed of all foresight when surely this was the kind of catastrophe prophets should have an eye for or some foreknowledge of but didn’t since it is now evident in hindsight that our seers’ gifts were of a lesser order, their warnings lowered to a tremulous bleating, the voices of men hedging their bets and without the proper pitch of hysterical accusation as they settled instead for fault-finding and analysis, that cautionary note which in the end proved wholly inadequate to the coming disaster because pointing out flaws was never going to be enough and figures and projections, no matter how dire, were never likely to map out the real contours of the calamity or prove to be an adequate spell against it when, without that shrill tone of indictment, theirs was never a song to hold our attention and no point whatsoever meeting catastrophe with reason when what was needed was
our prophets deranged
and coming towards us wild-eyed and smeared with shit, ringing a bell, seer and sinner at once while speaking some language from the edge of reason whose message would translate into plain words as
we’re fucked
well and truly fucked