Paul Durcan - created from Mind Map

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Nessa

The Girl with the Keys to Pearse's Cottage

Wife Who Smashed Television Gets Jail

Sport

Father's Day, 21 June 1992

Rosie Joyce

Quotes

Themes

Dramatic

She took me by the index finger And dropped me in her well. And that was a whirpool, that was a whirpool, And I very nearly drowned.

Take off your pants, she said to me, And I very nearly didn't;

She was a whirlpool, she was a whirlpool, And I very nearly drowned.

Love

Relationships

Anecdotal

Romantic adventure

Giddy experience of falling in love

Narrative

Themes

Quotes

Teenage infatuation

Loss

Identity

Love

Suffering

History / Memory

Travel / Journeys

When I was sixteen I met a dark girl; Her dark hair was darker because her smile was so bright;

Of bare brown rooms and on whitewashed walls Photographs of the passionate and pale Pearse.

Often she used linger on the sill of a window; Hands by her side and brown legs akimbo;

Humorous

Themes

Quotes

Mock journalistic report

Modern family life

Relationships

Suffering

'She came home, my Lord, and smashed in the television; Me and the kids were peaceably watching Kojak

I didn't get married to a television And I don't see why my kids or anybody else's kids Should have a television for a father or mother,

Justice O'Brádaigh said wives whoo preferred bar - billiards to family television Were a threat to the family which was the basic unit of society As indeed the television itself could be said to be a basic unit of the family

Jail was the only place for them. Leave to appeal was refused.

Troubled relationships

Themes

Quotes

Father and son

Relationships

There were not many fields In which you had hopes for me

I was a patient In B wing. You drove all the way down, Fifty miles, To Mullingar to stand On the sidelines and observe me.

I was fearful I would let down Not only my team but you.

Men with gapped teeth, red faces, Oily, frizzy hair, bushy eybrows

I made three or four spectacular saves, Diving full stretch to turn A certain goal around the corner

Sniffing your approval, you shook hands with me. 'Well played, son.'

Seldom if ever again in your eyes Was I to rise to these heights.

Train journey

Themes

Quotes

Reflection

Adverse effect of time on Durcan's role as husband and father

Travel / Journey

Relationships

Time

Just as I was dashing to catch the Dublin - Cork train, Dashing up and down the stairs, searching my pockets, She told me that her sister in Cork wanted a loan of the axe;

'OK. There is a Blue Cabs taxi ticking over outside And the whole world inspecting it, I'll bring her down the axe.'

I felt uneasy. Guilt feelings. It's a killer, this guilt. I always feel bad leaving her But this time it was the worst.

Two weeks of having the bed to herself, Two weeks of not having to be pestered By my coarse advances, Two weeks of not having yo look up from her plate And behold me eating spaghetti with a knife and fork.

'I am feeling guilty because she does not love me As much as she used to, can you explain that?'

All the green fields running away from us, All our daughters grown up and gone away.

Enthusiastic celebration

Themes

Quotes

Birth - granddaughter

Joy / Hope

Travel / Journey

That was that Sunday afternoon in May When a hot sun pushed through the clouds And you were born!

Rosie Joyce! May you some day in May Fifty - six years from today be as lucky As I was when you were born that Sunday;

The first yellow irises flagging roadside streams;

I rode the waters and the roads of Ireland, Rosie, to be with you, seashell at my ear! How I laughed when I cradled you in my hand.

But you saved my life. For three years I had been subsisting in the slums of despair, Unable to distinguish one day from the next.

Thank You, O Lord, for the Descent of Rosie onto Earth.