the snow and the dead
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sun, 14 Mar 1999 22:53:51 -0500
With all the talk of Joyce/Salinger comparisons, I was mulling it over
tonight as I walked out for an antihistimine to the late-night drugstore.
It's snowing here pretty heavily, as it is throughout our region, and I had
what Spaulding Gray would call a perfect moment, that one time of winter
when the weather brings to life that lovely ending of "The Dead":
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over
Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the
treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther
westward,
softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was
falling, too,
upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael
Furey
lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and
headstones, on
the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul
swooned slowly
as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly
falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living
and the dead.
And it falls here now on this mountainside, and I can look out the window
now at my nearest lamppost and see the air around it thick and alive, and
once more Joyce comes to life for me in that perfect way I look for at
least once each winter.
Have I said this here before, in another year, in another snow? Forgive if
I have, but the beauty of it never fails to astonish me. I add to it my
own dead, and the long-lost, and the estranged, and it all adds up to
something that never fails to move me.
Obligatory Salinger reference: I hope his plow is ready for the morning.
--tim o'connor