Pool_2

all this. En route he shuffled to the rhythm of his heart along the road edge whistling The Flower of Sweet Strabane. He didn't feel the cold or see the gray. He didn't choke on the air. His was a mind of bouquet, and her name was Katharine, Katharine MacCullah. To her shooing he began to sing, "Says my aul' one to your aul' one, come to the Waxies Dargle. Says my aul' one to your aul' one, I have not got a farthing. I've just been down to Monto Town to see young Kill McArdle.." at which point she punched him spitting breathless in the gut. "Gavin I'm telling you, go away!" Her fists were clenched on her hips. Her face was emphatic. "Caitlin, you are the air I breathe. You are flesh of my being. I've only come for your promise." Katharine blushed when he addressed her poetically as Caitlin. Caitlin ne' Houlihan was, as popularized by Yeats, the womanly essence of Ireland, an endearment which reliably brought the flush of rose that he sought to her cheeks. Caitlin was a name bowing to a heroic past, romantic and elegant, yet an identity embracing the very conflict he rejected. The cleave was already within him. He had written of the Sunless grim of irritability, Belfast, whose only cast of color is that reflected of myth. Raging Cuchulainn! Slaughterer. Vainglorious warrior of self serving narrow murderous purpose. Icon of two cultures. Hero to both ever at each other's throats. Appropriate exemplar blind in cause, terrible in moment. But you have to wonder about manhood clinging to this ideal - man as monster. For centuries Lillith has spread her legs here, welcoming all, generous in her spawn. Gavin rejected the Belfast present which he foolishly, youthfully, misread as the past. After all, this was the modern world. Old antagonisms were - well - old. Who the