I’m always
tempted to stop at derelict houses, old ruins, etc., sites where past
generations have left their mark. There’s a particular atmosphere, a poignancy.
In their state of aging or decay, they suggest sadness’s, hardships. The tiny rooms, the (often) miserably poor
land, potato ridges still outlined in a nearby field, a fuchsia in full bloom.
I hope to
find something more than just the gable or bare walls, something that will
transmit a stronger sense of the people that lived there. A surviving hearth,
the lintel over the window, over the door, the details that bring some
personality to the remains.
The other
day I came upon the ruins of an old cottage at the top of a valley in the
Bluestacks in Donegal. What a hard place it must have been in deep Winter; now
its walls half gone, but its extent and layout still very clear. In a recess in
the gable, there was a stone clearly shaped for some function; was it a pestle,
or a weight?
It is so
rare to find anything but bare walls scoured by the weather. I thought of
holding onto it, but, much more than any museum exhibit, it was where it belonged;
I left it.
No People
The
hunch-doubled thorns,
ingrown
pantries
dung-puddled;
the
moss-stone walls
tumble-gapped.
The
nettle-cracked doorway,
lintel-fallen
byre-footed;
the cloud
curtained windows
elder-berried.
The
stone-sheltered air
bumbled
still,
ruin-reverent;
the
submerged garden ridges
dumb-founded.
