Days Without End: AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Sebastian Barry

stench like it were coming from the arse of the devil. Heavy crust and smear of filth everywhere that has

missing some

His arms just whittled branches from a dried-out tree. Long hours we lie close and John Cole lays his hand on my head and leaves it there. John Cole, my beau.

We lie side by side in open carts and feel our leg bones knock against each other like some strange music.

Looks like we want to rub out America. Farms in ruins and blackened towns. Guess the world ended while we was away.

set to go on. Why not. A man may judge by this eating of the riverbank

There’s a half-blind preacher in a temple called Bartram House and I don my best dress and me and John Cole go there and we tie the knot. Rev. Hindle he says the lovely words and John Cole kiss the bride and then it’s done and who to know. Maybe you could read it in their holy book, John Cole and Thomasina McNulty wed this day of our Lord Dec. 7th 1866. In the euphoria of war’s end we reckon a craziness is desired.

Lige Magan. We been sending missives back and forth while we putting meat back on our bones. He’s struggling with his farm. The men that his

don’t mind being a matron now if that’s our fate. Guess it comes to every woman by and by.

fallen and is just a black brushstroke on the frost. The rain that

Black brusbsyroke

Now she’s ordered up beside the major who’s mounted on his fine black mare. When you see a horse like that you know you been riding a sorry nag all through Nebraska and Wyoming. Her coat gleams in the silvery glamour of the snow-light. It’s a long time since I rode with the major and all the old

Bistfkry

loyalty floods into my heart. Suddenly I feel sorely four or five sorrows. The loss of old comrades in times past. The dead in battles. The murder

Hiztory sorros

of Mrs Neale, a gentle woman. Somewhere in the back of all that are other matters. The shady ghosts of my family long gone by in Sligo. Sligo. A word I hardly even sounded in private thought in a decade of years. The filthied dress of my mother floats behind my eyes. My sister’s pinafore ruined by Death. The thin cold faces. My father lengthwise

We blunder through and call it wisdom but it ain’t.

Wisdom

There’s a kinda look to them like we being met by tramps. No-good people. Their fathers owned everything here and we was never heard of. Now a hundred thousand Irish roam this land and Chinese fleeing from their cruel emperors and Dutch and Germans and boys born east. Poured in across the

Defear of indian race

trails like a herd without an end. Every face before us look like it were slapped. Slapped and slapped again. Dark faces squinting out from under cheap hats. Beggars really. Ruined men. That’s what I am thinking. Then up from the copsewood yonder rides Caught-His-Horse-First. I ain’t seen him for many years. He got his war bonnet on and all his clothes is good. Musta made a special effort for the day. His face looks proud and cross as Jesus

Contnued