After Leanan

“MacDermott?”

He flinched.

“Brian MacDermott?”

He was older, much older than his photo, of course. But those eyes were unmistakable, those brows still furrowed with the piercing gaze that took you by surprise when you first flipped to the inside dust jacket.

One of the infamous brows rose haltingly, questioning as he turned from the green, rainswept valley below to regard his accuser.

He must have delighted in shocking readers with that photo, and my English lit professor had used it to great effect. “Once you’ve finished ‘Willow’s Requiem,’ I’ll ask you to flip to the back of the volume and contemplate the man who brought us such a gentle meditation.” Consensus was that he looked ready to stab you; someone in the front row asked if the photographer’s body was ever found.

But there, under the hawthorn, the anger was gone from his eyes. All that remained was a hollow of pained expectation.

I’d had a full week to prepare when I went to see Wendell Berry speak in Boston. Time enough to decide what to wear, how to introduce myself. With what witty remark to distinguish myself from all the other young acolytes. And whether there was any chance in hell I could slip him my chapbook without coming across as ridiculous.

Of course, we were all so much younger then.

The rain faltered, spitting out a cursory afterthought. Sheep clustered in the lee of grassy, furrowed rings below on the hill, and the smell of manure and wet hay rose to meet us.

The poet was waiting. Yes?

I hadn’t even come to Ireland for the poetry. It was clear by sophomore spring that I was absolute crap at writing the stuff. But I soldiered on almost a full year more, depressed and disgusted by my lack of talent, before switching to civil engineering. Storm drainage design proved a surprisingly creative outlet, and the resulting travel afforded me excuses enough to tame what other urges remained unscratched.

But the man’s gaze — the mythical Brian MacDermott’s terrible gaze was upon me. I would have given anything to unsay his name in that moment. I could have just studied him from a safe distance, watched him undetected as he walked his dog in the footsteps of those other vanished Irish kings. I could have gone back to the bus and left him in peace.

“You wouldn’t believe who I saw on the Hill of Tara,” I would tell Cassie.

“Who?”

“Brian MacDermott!”

She’d give me a blank stare, then I’d name a poem or two and mimic the furious brows. Then she’d laugh and say, “He’s still alive?” and I’d say “It was hard to tell,” and she’d laugh again.

The poet’s attention waned. Perhaps it had just been a trick of the wind. Perhaps I had said nothing after all. The terrier returned to his feet, spinning in pursuit of its own perfunctory tail.

“I’m sorry.” It seemed like the right thing to say. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

He nodded, as if accepting apology for the trespass of jostling his coffee. Was there more?

Of course there was.

“I loved ‘The Sweep.’” He said nothing, but his eyes settled on a softer place somewhere between us. “I read it to my wife on our first date.”

He seemed to think a long while.

“And she’s your wife now.” He pronounced it as a statement of uncertain consequence, as if asking whether it was now his turn to apologize.

I had always imagined his voice a baritone, Orson Welles with an Irish lilt. The reedy, Truman Capote bleat felt vaguely sacrilegious.

“I…. Just — thank you.” Yes, that was the right thing to say. He nodded again and allowed me a smile.

Really, that would have been enough — I didn’t need to say anything else. I’d had a chat with Brian MacDermott, the J.D. Salinger of Irish American poetry. Met him out on a stroll in County Meath.

For me, it was just a day trip — a bus tour of Dublin’s Greatest Hits on my way back from a project in Carlow — and our guide had given us twenty minutes to explore Tara. Most of the other tourists headed straight to the crest of the hill for selfies at Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny. I’d see it later, I thought, once they cleared out. So I followed the meandering blackberry hedge south along an indifferent footpath. The soft earth spoke of incomprehensible time scales, of the coronation of Irish kings who’d perished five centuries before the first pyramids were built.

And that’s where I found him, just around the far side of the rise, peering windward beyond a lonely cluster of trees. He had the collar of his overcoat up, but the front was unfastened and its tails flapped carelessly. A small dog scampered at his feet, fending off black tufts of thistle left by the grazing sheep.

His name left my mouth before I’d even had a chance to consider the consequences.

“I was going to be a poet.”

It was a stupid thing for me to say. Of course it was. At this point, the only thing that wouldn’t have been stupid or intrusive was another “Thank you,” followed by “Goodbye.” I cursed myself.

But he laughed. It was a genuine, heartfelt laugh, free of contempt.

“So was I. So was I.”

“I’m sorry.”

The terrible brows shifted inquisitively, grappling the question of what I was apologizing for now. I was no longer sure, either. A shroud of mist, wet and husky, rose from the valley below us where farm and pasture patchworked out to the scudding horizon. Behind us on the hill, tourists braced themselves against the gust and sought shelter.

“I’m not going to ask.”

He nodded, good, and turned again to face the coming storm. The terrier discovered a new target for its wrath and darted off to do battle with a fallen branch twice its size. I followed the poet’s gaze windward. In profile, he could have been a ship’s captain, eyes straining to discern a course through the rocky shoals ahead.

“Do you still write?” He asked it offhand, like he was inquiring about the time. I didn’t understand.

He left his storm watch to size me up and repeat the question. “You said you were going to be a poet. Do you still write?”

“I was crap at it.”

The laugh this time was quick and dismissive.

“We’re all crap at it. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that? Every one of us. Any man who says different is after your money.”

“But you…”

“I was crap, too. But I was lucky.”

The stanza came to me without effort: “I used to know where that road went — In the tangled sheen and hollow, gnarled wood and vine dressed in spring’s best greenery, Drawn over it like a veil…”

I drew in another breath. “You can’t tell me something like that was luck.”

He seemed pleased to hear his words from a stranger. “Sure. Yes,” he said. “That was a good day.”

The terrier was back at his feet now, wheeling in expectation from its victory over the bough. The poet knelt, one hand fetching something small from his flapping overcoat while the other reached to stroke the dog’s head.

“But you write nothing anymore?”

Lines on a dew-fogged window, half gone by the time they were finished. A mangled napkin bookmarking the paperback in my briefcase.

I shrugged, hopeless, penitent. “Blueprints. Specs. Project proposals.”

“Then why do you care?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why I stopped. Why does it make any difference to you?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Not in so many words.”

The wind rose again, and the breath of the earth seemed to fill him. “Why does it make any difference to anyone? Suppose I handed you my soul here, now, before God and creation. A sliver of the true cross, the corpse of a desiccated old poet. What would you do with it? Put it on the shelf with those other totems you’ve gathered? Try to cobble it into a map that gives your life significance? Meaning? Or maybe you’re more of the Facebook type.”

“I’m sorry.” Now I knew what I was apologizing for. So I said it again: “I’m sorry I disturbed you. I’ll let you be. Again, thank you.”

I turned to leave, but he wasn’t done. “You see, if you were writing — were at least trying to write. If you were trying and you found one day that your words had just dried up? That would be a fine reason to ask.” He shook his head. “Not that I’d have any comfort to offer.”

“But you’d want it to be grand, dramatic, of course. Like we should all be Hemingways.” The fury was again on his brow, the lightning in his eyes. “Oh, to have that much arrogance in one man — can you imagine? To have your whole existence wrapped up in the legend that you could take any comer, woo any woman…. You know, it took him ten years on the bottle and a shotgun to face the truth when she left?”

He spat sideways and turned again to face the weather. “Some of us have better things to do with our lives.”

We had the hill entirely to ourselves now. My fellow tourists had trickled back to the churchyard at the end of the stone wall and were now taking turns negotiating their way out through the narrow gate.

There really was nothing I could say. I took a step backwards, as if retreating from the audience of a sovereign.

“No, no — stay. You meant no harm. And you caught your leprechaun fair and square.” The anger had left him, and what remained in his voice was a bitter pride, hollow and flapping as dismally as his overcoat.

“You don’t need to. Really.”

He ignored my offer.

“It’s simple: I insulted her gift.” His eyes dared me to not understand. I didn’t understand.

“Leanan sídhe. Calliope. The muse.” He waited for a sign. “Good God — you did say you were married, didn’t you?”

I nodded, desperate to feign comprehension.

“It wasn’t anything special — just another Saturday night, out with the boys. It had been a good evening, and we might have had a couple extra pints. I made it home alone and tucked myself in, feeling good. Figured I’d sleep it off and take my time getting to church in the morning. Have a bit of lunch, a nap after, then get back to the desk in the afternoon. I’d been playing with folk songs.”

The brows rose, alive again but now more playful than furious, and settled on something I could not see.

“Of course I was still drunk when I woke up. It was some godawful dark hour and I had to take a piss. Stumbled to the loo, and halfway through my business she popped in and gave me the most beautiful goddamned line I’d heard in my life. So what am I going to do, standing there with willy in my hand? I told her I’d get to it. Thank you, thank you very much, but I’m a bit busy here, you see?” He illustrated the action with a rude pantomime.

“And that was it. She was gone.”

“When I finally got myself out of bed for good, I said the hell with church. I needed to get that line back. Straight through the morning, the afternoon, burning two holes into the paper on my desk. Nothing. Figured maybe it was the drink, so I poured a few more in and tried again. Nothing. Not a single word.”

The last of the tourist had cleared the gate.

“Six months on, I checked myself in. So that’s what everyone thought, of course: ‘Oh, it’s the drinking that ruined him.’” He shrugged. “It was rather convenient in a way: gave me a distraction, gave me some quiet. But no, I’m back to a couple of pints in the evening. Because that was never it.”

The wind fell, and crows settled contentiously along the stone wall. He was done now. The terrier dropped to its haunches and waited.

“And in case you’re wondering, I don’t much care for anyone’s pity. Cast a cold eye on life if you will, but if you can write, you write. If you can’t, and if you’re not dead yet, you move on.”

Streaked words on a windowpane. A poem in the sand. Quiet rhymes chanted down the steps to the parking lot. There was still time.

He glanced down at the terrier and instinctively reached to his coat pocket, then squared his shoulders and took in the grassy slope, the valley below and the approaching storm.

“Rain’s coming again,” he said. “You’d better get going. You’ll miss your bus.”