LOUIS SIMPSON
589
Continent. In the evenings we went to Portrush to drink half-and-half in a
pub. If anyone had told me that one day I would return to this place of my
own free will!
The reading took place at night. The audience sat bolt upright ... they
might have been cased in armor. I read serious poems, humorous poems, and
made off-the-cuff remarks, but nothing seemed to work ... the faces showed
no expression. So I did what I had never done before ... I stopped reading
poems and asked what was the matter. What had they expected?
They said that their existence was being threatened by the Catholics.
This was what concerned them. Then why, I couldn't help wondering, had
they come to hear poems? But we discussed the situation. When I spoke of
the shooting of Catholics by the British army on the day that had been
named "Black Sunday," a man in the audience corrected me. "We don't
call
it
that," he said, "we call it Good Sunday." I was glad that my wife and I were
leaving the next day.
At Seamus's house in Belfast we heard the Catholic side of the story.
When he was coming home at night he would be stopped and questioned ...
the ones who questioned
him
were his neighbors. He was thinking of moving
to the Catholic south.
He drove us to the station ... we were taking the train to Dublin. On
the way he handed me a large envelope.
It
contained a poem he had signed
for me as a parting gift. I thanked him, and when we got out of the car I put
the envelope in my suitcase.
We approached the entrance to the station. The army was out in force
... there had been a new wave of bombings. One of the soldiers looking
over the crowd picked out a suspicious face. He stepped in front of me and
told me to open the suitcase.
It
was full of dirty laundry ... shirts, underwear, and socks. "What is
that?" he said, and pointed to the envelope. I said, "A poem," thinking this
would be the end of it. But he tucked the automatic rifle under his arm,
reached for the envelope, and took out the sheet of paper. It was what I had
always feared, a critic with a machine gun. But the sentiments must have
been innocent. ... He put the poem back in the envelope, replaced it in the
suitcase, and waved me on.
We told the story in London, but the people seated at the table were in
a hurry to tell an Irish story of their own. The restraint on which English
men and women pride themselves was thrown overboard when they spoke
of Ireland. A woman who was important in theater circles said that the Irish
came to England to make good wages and take advantage of the free medi–
cal service, and went back to Ireland without paying taxes. Another of the
well-bred people at the table said that the Irish used their bathtubs to keep
coal
in.
BBC television staged a discussion of Ireland as a trial at Bar with
