VIEILLE OGRESSE with the dents JAUNES.  Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, la Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died?  Licentious men.  The froeken, Bonne A tout Faire, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala.  MOI Faire, she said, TOUS Les messieurs.  Not this monsieur, I said.  Most licentious custom.  Bath a most private thing.  I wouldn’t let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing.  Green eyes, I see you.  Fang, I feel.  Lascivious people.

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear.  Loose tobaccoshreds catch fire:  a flame and acrid smoke light our corner.  Raw facebones under his peep of day boy’s hat.  How the head centre got away, authentic version.  Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide.  Did, faith.  Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes.  Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.

Spurned lover.  I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you.  I’ll show you my likeness one day.  I was, faith.  Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog.  Shattered glass and toppling masonry.  In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me.  Making his day’s stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d’Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone.  Loveless, landless, wifeless.  She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers.  Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing’s.  Spurned and undespairing.  Tell Pat you saw me, won’t you?  I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time.  Mon Fils, soldier of France.  I taught him to sing the boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades.  Know that old lay?  I taught Patrice that.  Old Kilkenny:  saint Canice, Strongbow’s castle on the Nore.  Goes like this.  O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.

    O, O the boys of
    Kilkenny ...

Weak wasting hand on mine.  They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.  Remembering thee, O Sion.

He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots.  The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of brightness.  Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I?  He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil.  Turn back.