More on: Gerard Smyth

These days I write elegies and read the Metaphysicals. And when I turn the radio on prefer to hear a pennywhistle playing “Purple Heather.” In all weathers I wander back to parishes where I feel nostalgia for the doughnut shop and the junkyard where things were given a second chance.   It was there that…

I think of the days in our first house of marriage, in our country of clouds that were black like shadows on shadows, when hope and history seemed to hang in the balance between the bomber and the assassin. Those were the evenings spent leaning across the wooden table to hear the talk of dear…

The man I imagine walking to Emmaus is the one I saw in Caravaggio’s flesh-and-bone depiction of Christ beckoning the taxman to his side, steady arm outstretched, pointing a finger at the table of cardsharps. It’s a gesture that’s the same in every language and seems to say there’s no time to wait for those…