Vale Edna O'Brien

London '69 and I'm at a party talking with Edna O'Brien,

animated, talented and beautiful, whom I have just met.

“Edna, do you read Sean O'Casey?”

“I do indeed. I love the man. His plays, his autobiographies

all six, such spirit, such writing.”

“And you do know that males improve with age?”

“I do indeed. Yeats of course. A sage.”

She was smiling in recalling the poem.

Then she asked in her sweet lilting Irish accent

“And will you always be faithful and true to me, Barry?”

To which I replied “Well of course Edna, one would aim for it,

one would wish fidelity to be a cornerstone of any relationship.

How could it be other? But that said, nothing in this world is certain.”

“Barry, that's a tad equivocal if you don't mind me saying,

in fact wishy washy, it's short of a sure-fire commitment,

'one would aim for it'. Spare me such tosh and balderdash.”

“Edna, tell me you like James Joyce.”

“Barry... Joyce is the mountain, the aspiration, the alpha and omega,

the poetic impulse for the Irish and even some of the Heathen

the Voice of God, I'm humbled to even speak of him.”

“Edna, will you always be faithful and true to me?”

“Baz, if I may be familiar, one would of course

aim for it but I'll be forthright.

If say, Sean Connery, Robert Mitchum, Michael Caine

or Marlon Brando were to hang their hat on my door,

I would let Nature take its course.

Just saying, we Irish do not look a gift horse in the mouth.

But heavens above I would hate to be perceived as a floozy,

a flibbertigibbet, a tart or a strumpet. I'm no bed hopper.

There would need to be love in it...

I've been married Barry, and for me, never again.”

“I take it that's a no Edna?”

“You can bet your sweet sonnets on it Sonny Jim.”

[Edna O' Brien was married to Ernest Gebler, a Dublin native, and they had two children.

It didn't work out. He was about 20 years older, and although a successful author

he became jealous of her success, in fact later claiming he'd written her novels.

I recently bought her collected short stories in Melbourne, The Love Object which I'm reading and enjoying between other books. It lead me to read her initial trilogy, The Country Girls which has been sitting on my bookshelf for some years now, along with her compilation of Irish poetry, Some Irish Loving. The Country Girls is now considered a classic of its time although it was banned in Ireland, denounced from the pulpit and copies were burned. Such was the power of the Irish Catholic Church, now diminished due to numerous sexual abuse scandals. It struck me that much of The Country Girls and some of the short stories were obviously taken from her life, so I bought her autobiography, Country Girl, written in her 80s – she's 91 now. I'm Edna'd out, but it's a good read and she mentions those famous movie stars above.

I remembered a recent dream I had, and there it is. Written in December 2023.]