Birthday

It would have been my mother’s birthday today. She died almost 3 years ago, and from time to time waves of recollection wash over me. Not grief, just memories of conversations and echoes of her voice.

She and I were at different periods bitter, painful enemies and good friends. In the last third of her life we were, generally, the latter. We had a hard-won complicity and comfort between us at the end that I have not found since. I do miss her very much, increasingly in fact as the years go by.

In her honour, here’s her favourite poem. She was Welsh, not Irish, but the Celt in her always responded to that yearning for the unattainable Yeats writes about. She told me that she heard the author himself read it on the radio in the 1930s or 40s. Happy Birthday, Mum.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
and a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
and live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping
slow,
Dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket
sings;
There's midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B. Yeats