A man in a wheelchair moves between the cars that are stopped for the red lights. He shakes his paper cup of coins and asks for more. The drivers tell him they don’t have any spare change, and they say it from behind closed windows. When the lights change to green, they drive away from him, on O’Connell Bridge, in the centre of Dublin.
A man rummages in a bin looking for empty plastic bottles, that he can return for their deposits. He rescues four, and puts them in his bag, that is filled to explosion with empties already. His hands are dirty, and his hair is matted, and his clothes stink of street, and shit, and horror. He takes his bag of bottles and moves onto the next bin, to look for more.
A woman talks loudly on her mobile phone and explains that she is on her way, to collect her pay.
“You can have the lot,” she says, “I can give it you directly, just meet me there!”
She is rushing through the crowds, to give away all her money, so that there is nothing left.
To begin so far behind, feels like free falling.
Feels like drowning in fire.
Dublin is being cooked slowly; stewed in its own fat and poison and is becoming inedible.
The Liffey should be raging in a blaze of anger, to make shame of the violences and grim meanness we live with. The “Ireland that we dreamed of” was full of storytellers, dancers, and wild free singers.
Not this that we settled for, not this.
Eamon de Valera: “The Ireland that we dreamed of” St Patrick’s Day broadcast – 1943
Shorter than me 
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