Page 93 - November 2020

November 2020 93
Litterateur

THE CYNICAL REVOLUTIONARY

“So how do you hope to achieve your demands; are you going to occupy the Dail
and RTE, seize the seat of power and proclaim a workers’ state?”

I felt as if I’d been speaking a foreign language to them.

“Well let’s see your paper then, do you have a paper?”

The man rummaged in his bags till he came up with a morning tabloid.

“The Star!” I blurted. “Sorry, sorry, I thought you’d have a party paper.”

“Some of us read the Examiner.”

I looked at the heading on the front page of the Star.

100,000 Water Protesters March on Dail. Minister Hogan Takes Flight.

For some reason or other my mind wandered to the high-speed train scenes in the
film version of Dr Zhivago; fired up Trotsky, played by Tom Courtney,
commanding the revolutionary forces spread along the front, from a carriage in
which he was sole occupant. His greatcoat was pure leather, as was the
fashionable peaked cap from where his visionary gaze assessed the course of the
war.

“Maybe you’d have a paper May?” the man turned to the woman beside me.

“I gave up reading them Phonsie, look at the lies they wrote about the last
protest.” She turned to me, “and as for your lovely RTE, I’d burn it to the ground.”

“So, what kind of poetry do you write, I used to like Pearse’s one ‘The Fool’?”
Phonsie said, “My teacher was a mad IRA man. We had it off by heart.”

Since the wise men have spoken…I was wondering, should I?

“Oh, it’s about freedom,” I fumbled with ‘The Star’. “how we can’t ever be really
free in this life but see glimpses of it in moments of enlightenment, that kind of
stuff, that keeps us going.”