It’s true – you said no more beehive huts. As if beehive huts are something
you should enjoy only once. I’d bought a map in Australia, plotted
our circuitous route. Only to begin – and realise our map was in miles, my
planning in kilometres. We’d also decided, as not going far, we’d get a manual
you couldn’t drive, ration our limited euros. It was not all beehive huts –

there were the earth and stones of Tara. Streets of Belfast where we
got stuck behind Orangemen practising for 12 July (vowing by then to be
in the Republic). We did the touristy thing – you draping yourself across

Giants Causeway’s hexagons à la Houses of the Holy. Me looking for
where an ancestor lived – with just handed-down sing-song chant
of a long-gone great-grandfather: Augher, Clogher & Fivemiletown. When
we got to the townlands – they looked more like paddocks: Tumbled-down
houses, Weeds & Thickets. Somewhere, we visited a holy well, ribbons
twisting from trees, saw two-faced Janus on Boa Island. I showed you

Yeats’ grave – resisted temptation to show you Carrowmore. Climbed
in the fog to Medb’s grave, on Knocknarea, instead. In the Burren we looked
for people that looked like you – your face as Irish as your Flanagan name.

Dingle to Gallarus Oratory (which I swore was not a beehive hut – for all
the heaped-up stone suggested otherwise). Cork where we slept in the tent
I always carried backpacking before morning disappointment of Blarney –
castle diminishing to single over-kissed stone. The Rock of Cashel, that for all

its name so strong, I can hardly remember (might have forgotten altogether
were it not for the photographs). Glendalough where round-tower looked
just like on the Guinness poster (not that the brewery in Dublin looked
at all like that). Trinity, where you stuck out your tongue at a statue
of a provost who wouldn’t admit women – we’ve not bothered to remember
his name – just the beehive huts, which still make you shudder.

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Carl Walsh is a poet, with ADHD, who lives and writes on Wurundjeri land. His first book of poetry Tarp Green Light was published in the 2024 series of Flying Islands Pocket Poets.

2026 Bloomsday Supplement - Table of Contents