Vinegar Hill by Colm Tóibín

Author:Colm Tóibín [Tóibín, Colm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

I RAN AWAY

On this very spot, forty-five years ago,

By the canal between Baggot Street

And Leeson Street, I was attacked

And arrested by four hungry-looking

Members of the Special Branch.

They were hunting down terrorists

And I must have had a suspicious look.

What stays in my memory is a moment

When I was sprinting up to Leeson Street

Bridge with the four plainclothes cops in pursuit

And I passed a prostitute who was alone,

Leaning against the railing. ‘You’re worse

To run,’ she said, her tone stoic, implacable,

Uninvolved. And then later after they

Caught me and pinned me down, the Branchmen

Saw that I had a book with me that might,

I suppose, be helpful in their investigations.

One of them took it up, opened it, and,

As his colleagues asked me questions

About my putative fight for Irish freedom,

The cop flicked through the pages.

Soon, he indicated to one of

The others that he, too, should

Examine these lines of verse, perhaps

They held a buried clue to some vast

Conspiracy against the state itself.

I kept one eye on them as I explained

To their companions that I was an innocent student

‘Why did you run when you saw us?’ they asked.

‘How could I have known,’ I asked,

‘That you are Branchmen?’ He looked as if

I had questioned the essence of his being.

A day later, with my breath back,

I knew I should have explained that I ran

Because within all of us hides a latent guilt

That waits to be woken by Branchmen real or false.

What made me run, though, to tell the truth,

Was that I was simply afraid of my shite.

No point in evoking hidden darknesses,

Or atavistic, primal forms of shame.

Meanwhile, the two Branchmen were still leafing

Through the book, bored and puzzled, it seemed,

By what they found there. They soon indicated

To the other Branchmen that maybe the fellow

They had arrested, likely as he was,

Might not be on the run, and not the type

To give his life for Ireland. It might be wise

To hand him back the book and let him go.

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