The O’Siadhail story

Growing up in Ireland in the 1950s, America was not a continent — it was what was otherwise called ‘the States.’ At that time, America had cultural traces in Ireland on many levels. For example, as a boy in Dublin, I played Cowboys and Indians, which reflected the imported American movies, or ‘films’ as we called them. A popular counting-out rhyme was a racist version of “eenie meenie miny mo” which had somehow crossed the Atlantic.

As a slightly older boy, I spent time on the Aran Islands off the West coast of Ireland. There, I saw women visiting home from Boston, where they had emigrated to work as domestics. These were women who may have longed to be courted during their short visit home, to marry on the island and not have to go back. There were indeed many lonely single men, but I think the lipstick and American-style clothing that replaced the traditional bright red petticoat and crossover shawl may have intimidated them.

On the island, I heard some men who had spent time in the States using American English words while speaking Irish: Chuir mé mo chois ar an nGaspedal: I put my foot on the ‘gas’ pedal. The normal word in Hiberno-English of the time would be ‘accelerator.’ Again, talking Irish they would speak of a ‘sidewalk’ when the usual Hiberno-English would be a ‘footpath’ or ‘pavement.’

Everyone I knew back then had some relative in the States. I had an uncle. For many a ‘letter from America’ implied a remittance, money being sent to help out back home. Our uncle had sent substantial items, a fridge, an Atwater Kent radio. On one of his occasional returns we drove to Cobh, a major harbour in the South of Ireland, and went out on a tender to meet him off the liner that had crossed the Atlantic from America.

All over Ireland, humble cottages had a shelf with two pictures on display: a holy picture on one side, and a photograph of President Kennedy on the other. Apart from how he had charmed the Irish nation on his four-day visit to Ireland in June 1963, so very many Irish mothers had a son in the States. The photograph of Kennedy betokened a desire for their son’s success.

I first came to America with my wife Bríd in the summer of 1972. We landed in New York on a sweltering day and were booked into a hotel near Times Square. We had never seen a window air conditioner, and knew neither what it was nor how to use it. Suffering from the heat, we went out for a walk only to be shocked at seeing so many drugged or drunk people lying on the side of the street.

My visit was to attend a conference in Ann Arbor, and from there we visited friends and relatives in Fort Lauderdale in Florida, in Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut and in Jericho on Long Island. We enjoyed ourselves so much we wondered if we might at some point live here. But then we thought no more of it.

Since I left a professorship at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1987, on multiple book tours I have given readings at some eighty US universities, colleges, various conferences and societies across the country. Many of these venues I revisited on several occasions. Yet prior to coming to live here in the US twelve years ago, I never spent more than six weeks in this country at one time.

My first wife, my beloved Bríd, died in June of 2013, three months before my Collected Poems were published. It was heartbreaking, as during the forty-four years we’d been together she had always lovingly understood and supported my calling to be a poet, and along with my best friend David Ford had been my first reader.

In 2014, on a book tour to promote my Collected Poems, I re-met Christina, whom I’d met briefly five years earlier. I now fell irrevocably in love with her. Shortly afterward, I came to New York to marry her and to make my home here. I am a love exile.

I am so grateful for this gift of love and have delighted in living here. They have been happy and productive years. The entirety of my poetic work is published here by Baylor University Press. Northwestern University Press recently published The Essential Poems of Micheal O’Siadhail. I am now an American citizen.

Yet I’m always aware of the hardships my fellow Irishmen endured as they helped to build much of New York City. They were dominant in building the Brooklyn Bridge, in digging Manhattan subways and tunnels, and manning the police and fire departments.

I am also conscious of this country’s colonial history and of the current problems in addressing the distribution of wealth. I have got to admit that I am sometimes shocked at how materialistic the culture can be. For all that, I am grateful that this country has taken me in.

How quickly the time passes, but I am so fortunate to live in a lovely part of Manhattan by the East River, and in an era when I can talk so easily with — and even see — friends back in Ireland. Still those emigrant songs that yearned for a homeland in the days of no return echo in me:

Echoes

First weeks I walk an Upper East side park
As slowly new tomorrows dawn on me.
Is it here that I’ll live out my days?

How many million ghosts still disembark
To roll the dreaming dice of destiny?
O land of wanderers and emigrés

Sing Bánchnoic Éireann Ó or Spancil Hill —
Your longing cries had often made me grieve
For all who’d left and never would return.

But I have come here of my own freewill
And following my mending heart I thieve
More years of joy. For what would I now yearn

As month by month I stroll this park that veers
And curves along the waterfront to where
A swoop of homing pigeons peck and coo?

Day in day out as months now count their years
In this my second life I walk on air;
What could I ever now regret or rue?

Yet exile songs still echo deep within.
It’s not that I blank out or cast aside
My island’s history bred in the bone,

The sacred memories of kith and kin.
But now is now and I have hit my stride –
This Upper East Side park I make my own.