“The Shortest Day” by Colm Tóibín

Professor O’Kelly is varying his normal routine. He’s been visiting a Neolithic tomb in his native Ireland (“older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids”) for some time, but he's usually there in summer. But this year, he’s opened up a bit of time before Christmas, and he’s off to explore, take photographs, and ponder. And he’ll return to his family on Christmas Eve. He's even already done his Christmas shopping. 

His in captivated by this tomb, and he’s also captivated by a fragmented story told a few months before by a man visiting his brother in the town near the tomb. Something happens at the tomb on the shortest day of the way. So, O’Kelly is off to do his work at the tomb and find out if there’s anything to the story.

 

There’s a problem, however, and it’s one O’Kelly is unaware of. The spirits who inhabit the tomb are aware of his impending visit, and when he makes his reservation at the inn, the local townspeople are as well. And no one wants him to come. Why can’t he visit when he usually does?

 

And things will happen.

 

Colm Tóibín

The Shortest Day is a short story by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It’s a charming story, written with a dash of humor and an underlying message that’s serious. And the story of the spirits is perfectly believable. After all, this is the land of leprechauns and banshees, so why shouldn’t there be a few (or more than a few) odd spirits inhabiting a 5,00-year-old tomb (“Older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids”?

 

Tóibín (born in 1955) has published both fiction and nonfiction. His nonfiction includes The Trial of the Generals, Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border, Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, and All a Novelist Needs: Essays on Henry James. His fiction includes Brooklyn, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, The Master, Brooklyn, Mothers and Sons: Stories, and The Empty Family: Stories. His plays include Beauty in a Broken Place, The Testament of Mary, and Pale Sister. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

From Prison to Public School Mentoring – Antoine Davis at Front Porch Republic.

 

The 2023 Audubon Photography Awards – Audubon Society.

 

Two Pubs and the Jesus Hospital Estate – A London Inheritance.

 

Add title – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Poets and Poems: Colm Tóibín and “Vinegar Hill”

Vinegar Hill is two places representing two things. It’s the site of a battle in 1798 during the Irish Rebellion, in which Irishmen battled against, and lost to, the troops of George III. The site of the battle is just north of Wexford in Ireland, where Colm Tóibín would be born in 1955. And Vinegar Hill is the name of a neighborhood in Brooklyn, next to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that had a large Irish American population (so large that New Yorkers referred to it as Irishtown).  

The title poem of the poetry collection Vinegar Hill published by Tóibín refers to the site of the battle. “We can see the hill from our house. /” he writes. “It is solid rock in the mornings / As the sun appears from just behind it. / It changes as the day does.” His mother, taking art classes, is trying to paint the hill, but the hill keeps changing. And Tóibín, trying to describe the color, decides there’s no point in invoking history.

The collection has so many American-set poems, and the poet has so many American connections, that the title easily shares connections to that Brooklyn neighborhood. What the two Vinegar Hills share is the hopes and dreams of the Irish people.

To continue reading, Please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.