School

To the memory of Master Fitzpatrick for whom
I have always had a soft spot. Notwithstanding
his faults, he was inspirational.

__________

It was always there
its broad sloping slated roof
and gable chimneys
solemn and erect against the sky.
Unyielding.
Unfeeling of my need to know,
save that in time, I too,
skewered from my path,
would be dragged between the railing and high stone wall
down into its innermost depth.

"Who struck McCormack?" *
"The man with the caster hat!"
A morning ritual on the way to school,
as mysterious as the solitary gull
fretting above the rooftops.
Or the morning papers, bundled and abandoned in the doorway.
A slow place
where rock-faced cladding, spires and lawns
bristled in clean air.

They took a battering ram to my consciousness:
a work of genius.
Cost?
A penny! *
I loved the feel of it,
and the smell of it when it was new;
and its small pages crammed with the printed word.
A masterpiece!
A literary gem of rhyme and repetition.
A book in which big words were linked to big ideas.
And where "nothing" no longer meant nothing,
but something,
because we were made from nothing.
A world in which anything was possible,
because nothing was impossible.
And three in to one did go! *
And where there was no need to worry
about not knowing the answer,
because some questions
HAD NO ANSWER!
And besides,
this world was not the real world,
because there was a world elsewhere.

So I wondered.
And raising my eyes to the high gable window
BELIEVED!
that if you could get a window that high up
anything was possible.

So blithely we skipped through this Holy spirit-world
of:
Creation
Incarnation
and redemption.
Resurrection
and Ascension.
Heaven;
and Hell.
Sacraments
and Sacramental's;
Sacrilege;
and Sin.
Mortal Sin
and Venial Sin.
And Perfect
and Imperfect
Contrition,
Confession,
and Absolution.
Confirmation.
Consecration
and Transubstantiation.
Of
Heretics,
Infidels ,
Indulgences and
TRUTH!

I did not hear the subtle roar of dogma,
as I watched the waves, white on a silver sea
rise and rasp towards the shore.
But I saw the grains of sand passing in shadows
and the dunes with their scrawny heads.
I was a schoolboy musing -
This was how it had always been.

And this was a moment of truth
bereft of bravado.
We were solemn and listening
and he was flexing it.
"This", he said, "is the Black Doctor.
I prescribe the dose and the doctor gives it!"

But he taught in fits and starts.
And disappeared in fits and starts.
So we outmaneuvered him in fits and starts.
And with the room in uproar,
cribbed the answers from his book.
And while he brewed his tea on the hearth
and communed with the Devil in Hell;
In stealth - I rose from my chair
and poked my toe at his bum.

"Beyond the East!" I told them pointing,
"the sunrise!
Beyond the West, the sea.
And East and West," I told them flailing,
"a wander thirst, that will not let me be!"

__________

© Cormac McCloskey

"Who struck McCormack!" A greeting from the window cleaner, Jimmy Shaw, who, in the first instance, left his ladder and popped across the street to school me in the answer. "The man with the caster hat!" I had no idea what it was all about. But it is a pleasant memory. "Cost a penny". Alludes not just to the price, but to what we called it. "The penny catechism" or "caddy". "Three in to one did go." The doctrine of, The Blessed Trinity. The poem: Wander Thirst by Gerard Gould, which Master Fitzpatric brought to life by requiring me to recite to the class, gesticulatig as appropriate