Near The Sally Gap

This is a long one I'm afraid.

On Monday I attended a wake; my friend's mother. Slant was there, and the other blippers in my family. The cloud-ceiling cracked into an uncharacteristally beautiful evening. We followed the hearse to the local church on Mt. Merrion hill.

Tuesday we attended the funeral. Sunshine most of the day, a startlingly blue sky. I mistook the traffic on the nearby road for wind in the trees, so peaceful was the setting in Shanganagh cemetary. Lunch in Killiney Castle, then I wandered down from the hotel, into a hot summer afternoon.

Wednesday Sam was working late. As I was waiting to pick up the wean, I saw this ROOFER taking a break on a wing of the nearby church, which I figured might be my blip.

I took the wean to the Deerpark playground, where I met my friend J (whose mother had died). He has had an eventful two years: his father's death, his marraige to S, then his mother's death.

He suggested a visit to Powerscourt waterfall (where they filmed the excerable Excalibur, one of the talented Boorman's most risable films). But when the wean fell asleep in the car we changed our plans and swung a left up the steep hill and onto the twisty little road to Glencree and the Wicklow Mountains.

It's great to travel with someone who has a very personal angle on the landscape. We stopped first in Glencree itself (which isn't more than a few houses on a hairpin bend in a deep, mossy, tree-cl.ouded valley, one of the few wooded areas in the area). J brought me into a little cemetary for German War dead, a strangely cut-off place hewen out of the rocky side of a hill. Deeply quiet and peaceful in a different way from Shanganagh, with tall mossy trees and a brown mountain stream hollowing out the silence. Unfussy stone plaques and twin stone crosses (recalling German uniforms now I come to think of it). Very simple but well-made, slightly neglected, but not at all gone to seed. J drew my attention to the beautifully made GATE, with its elegantly simple ironwork.

Then we drove up over Kippure, towards the Sally Gap. Here's a poem about the place, from my recent collection, THE SKY ROAD:

Driving Through The Sally Gap

Above Glencree,
the car bounces and the road rises
on wind-cured air, swatches of silky gloom.

The TV mast over on Kippure
is the only whisker of anything
four-walled or closed-in.

Cloud-browsed, darkening shoulders
go on down into a nesting ground
for the ghosts of glaciers.

Crossroads. A signpost
where a great elk stood, antlers
branching out of the mist,

belling the names: Blessington,
Roundwood, Enniskerry... it?s late.
Time for the long way home

where the line bellies and dips,
something with the wind up
galloping away with itself.

J was patient, as I kept stopping to take photographs, such as the one above, or the following, of J TAKING A WALK. The drive worked well for both of us, especially as the wean was asleep for much of it. I had meant to revisit our neighbouring mountains for years, and the bare, cloudswept openness is, I would guess, one of the least disagreeable backdrops for grief.

On our way home J indulged me further, allowing me to leave the wean (who was now well awake) in his care while I walked back along the lethally dangerous verge in the Rocky Valley, to photograph some amazing looking GOATS.