The Curse of Onegin: Stories and Poems

By Eoin Meagher

The stories and poems in this collection use a range of styles and topics, from the humorous to the Gothic, from folk tales to stories of modern life. They trace the thoughts and development of a mind searching the world around us and his own psyche for some truth and meaning to give value to our existences. They uncover many of the lies and fictions that we usually use to sustain comfortable beliefs. There is a brutal honesty here that many will find unsettling, but there is hope too of a grim and determined kind.
Eoin Meagher is a writer, editor and teacher of literature and philosophy. He comes from Ireland and, as well as writing, sustains himself, his partner and young son by teaching and by growing food. His poetry has regularly been compared to W.B. Yeats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Firebird Inc.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9788382458121

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Stories & Poems

Eoin Meagher

Acknowledgements

The publication of this collection has been made possible by the generous patronage of Phillip Schmoll. I must thank him for more than financial support, however. He and his wife Kathie have been enthusiastic listeners to and critics of most of the stories and poems that appear here, and several of them were written in the peaceful and inspiring environs of their beautiful home in Dresden. Thank you both for helping me believe in myself.

I must also thank my old friend and fellow writer, Dominic Coutts whose insight and keen literary mind have helped me to hone many of the stories and poems into their current passable states. He has helped me 'make something of limited talent.'

Finally, I want to thank Heidi White and everyone at Forma Journal for publishing the poem "Swallows' and for their encouragement.

Swallows

I

I hear the manic swallows’ cries

Carving the shrill air where they fly

Filling the vacant arcs their wings describe.

They are all shape and sound

And spinning ellipses round and round

Against a disposable background.

For suddenly from this balcony I face,

Across a gulf of echo-vaulted space,

Another memory haunted place.

Where the circling swallows filled

Deep summer evenings, and stilled

The trickling moment’s ripples.

And I, as a boy, in wonder and dread,

Thought I was the Eoghaneen of whom I read

Flew with them when summer and he were dead.

II

They weave and shriek occult contours,

The mindscape’s geomantic figures,

An arcane alphabet that thought obscures.

But circles the mind back to old sorrow,

Their cries clawing memory like a harrow

Engraving the hollow vessel of tomorrow.

For again the mind spills through the eye

Of the vortex, to another evening sky,

Another courtyard round which the swallows fly.

Where the Norman still keeps his vigils

And horses’ hooves ring on the cobbles

And I relive a memory no longer personal.

Circling ever back and back, now, to where

Their cries first pierced our shielded fear

And carried it beyond us on the air.

Perhaps some prehistoric sorrower

Standing on a shrinking glacier

First conned their cries as the sun lowered.

And felt the lacerating joy pitched so

It becomes a keenly pleasurable sorrow

Mysteriously beyond what we can know.

III

Now, as their dark-winged eyres

Wind down the darkness by degrees,

And my mind is mesmerised to ease:

They shriek the end of all summers’ suns

And line the wires like the dead days done,

Numbering down to nothingness one by one.

Aisling

Part 1.

-1-

Standing by the window and waiting. Noises from the floors below. They were searching. They were coming.

Up through the derelict building the sound of them comes. Calls on the stairwell. Nowhere to run or hide. The ground far below.

But he doesn’t have the courage. To jump. He never could do it.

Aisling.

        ‘Come on! I dare you! Jump!’

        ‘But why, Aisling?’

        ‘Because it’s scary and it’s fun. It makes you feel free.’

        ‘It’s dangerous though. It’s too high.’

        ‘Don’t be such a chicken. I did it.’

        ‘I can’t, Aisling!’

        ‘Course you can.’

        ‘I can’t! I don’t want to!’

        ‘Cowardy Custer. If you love me you’ll do it.’

Oh how he loved her! He trembled and looked down to the snow below him. So far below that the hole Aisling made when she landed seems small and unreal. And he sees her face down there looking up like a miniature doll come to life and the shock-dizzy falling sensation and jolt make him gasp.

‘I said if you love me you’ll jump.’

How he did. Sometimes it hurt. His yearning.

‘But I can’t, Aisling! I just can’t!’

‘Then you don’t love me.’

‘I do!’

Her face turns away and she’s silent.

‘Aisling!’ but she doesn’t reply.

His heart pounds and tears well up. He’s dizzy and sick in his stomach. The world spinning blurred and he’s terrified too near the edge. And anguished, despairing, asks why is she doing this? Why? Please! Anything else.

‘Aisling!’

Then that sudden feeling of warmth filling up the whole world:

‘Come on down silly.’ And she smiled that smile that brought tingles to his stomach and called him, laughing, a dodo.

And he thought how much he loved her and how he would go to the end of the world for her. He’d do anything for her, except jump.

So Aisling jumped alone.

And he’d wondered, grief stricken: ‘Why, Aisling? Why?’

And ran away to London to forget.

Euston station was busy and bustling. No one there noticed him. He noticed everything. He was in awe of everything.

People. Faces. Strangers. Races. Traffic. Buildings. Sky. Strange, foreign atmosphere like Christmas. But cold and unfriendly and no merry greetings and no smiling faces and no kind of welcome at all.

Uneasy, uncertain and shivering cold. Takes a

pullover from his bag so it’s sagging almost empty now. Must go out of this station and into the darker streets to find a place to stay. Fifty pounds in his pocket lurks guiltily there. Robbed from his father’s coat. The pockets were deep and forbidding like tunnels to sin.

His father’s coat is hanging up on a peg behind the door in the hall back home. His father would miss him by now and be worried. Everyone in the town would hear of it soon and they’d talk about him on the streets and in the pubs. The old men with their Guinness and Jamesey in the corner with his dog.

‘He was a grand wee lad. It’s a shame.’

‘What could have happened at all?’

‘Sure, you know what happened.’

‘Bad cess to him anyway, that’s what I say.’

‘Ah, it was sad though. It was sad.’

He found this cheap room like a lowlife down in King’s Cross. Unclean with the hint of its history. Clicks a flimsy lock shut feels insecure. And fully dressed so skin won’t touch the sheets, curls up and hears the city noises terrorise his ears. Tomorrow, brave sun, must find a job. So sleep, dream, Aisling, weep.

He couldn’t get a job that day. He couldn’t get a job the next day. A week passed. His money was gone. He couldn’t get a job.

"Sorry mate, we don’t need help.

We regret to inform you.

We’re looking for experience. That place has

been taken. We do expect neat dress. Sorry. You’re not suited. I meant to take the sign down.

No!"

Then his landlord:

‘If you can’t pay you’ve got to go. That’s how it is.’

So he was broke and without shelter, cold and wandering the streets. Destitute and friendless.

And that’s how it was.

Nowhere to go in the unfamiliar city. What to do? How to get some money? Walking, head low, watching every scrap of paper. Might be a five or a ten that has fallen there. Fantasy and horror. Lonely. Aisling wasn’t there.

All night he walks like this. Too cold to sleep. Fearing the night city. Dark and brooding with terrible tales in the alleyways. Fearing life. Wretched. Aisling wasn’t there.

Comes to a bridge over the river. The Thames flowing dark and dirty below him. Deep like a grave. Full of secrets. Solemn, enfolding, alluring.

And Aisling was there.

Her voice in his head; ‘If you love me you’ll jump.’

How he had wept. In sorrow and in pity and in shame. He just hadn’t the courage to do it.

Aisling!

-2-

Bright morning sun on the stirring streets. Loud, fresh people are hurried and scurried to hustle the

nighttime away. He feels a vague new hope with their presence and ventures to seek their aid.

To a suit-clad, respectable man whom he asks for some money for food.

Ignored him! Ignored like dirt! A stunning pang of burning shame that frightens him.

On a park bench, half sitting, he sleeps. Half sleeping. The bitter shivering cold awakens him. Cramped muscles violently trembling and it’s late afternoon. Cold winter, dusk darkened sky. He looks at his watch.

‘Excuse me, have you got the time, please.’

‘Sure. It’s. . .ten to one.’

‘Thanks.’

She smiled that smile that brought tingles to his stomach. Her eyes were sparkling with life and youth and something that skipped light across his heart. And as she parted her eyes stayed dancing upon him till with a flick and a swish of her summer dress she turned and light-stepped like velvet flowing across the street and away.

‘Who’s she?’ he asked.

‘Dunno. Nice though. She must be new in town.’

‘Ye. She is. But yez may as well forget it. She’s one of them.’

Sharp and cruel. And it hurt. Cruel, sharp breeze and he’s cold to the brittle bone. And his stomach aching for food. Walking for warmth he comes to a market place. Fruit stalls and people. Chatter and cries on the frosty air. Gruff foreign voices all gaily subdued

by the quiet of evening shade.

In guilt, head low, he walks among them.

It’s wrong! Sinful! It’s stealing!

They must know his mind.

Go on! So hungry!

Eyes watching. His guilt must show. They know.

You’ll be caught! They know!

So much they have. They wouldn’t miss. So hungry.

Do it!

Thief! Thief! You’ll be caught!

Do it! Do it!

Thief! They know!

Do I! I dare you!

Jump!

Hand shot out! Bananas! A shout! ‘Oy! What’s your game?’ Heart leaps! Panic! A blur of red and confusion. Large dark shape looms closer.

Then he ran.

He runs and runs. Through the crowds and the cries. Sobbing, bumping, jostling, running. Across the street and round the corner. Past the shops all whipping past. Lungs and heart are aching. Legs are pumping quick. Down the alley, into the park. Breath in aching sobs.

That sound now and his heart and the quiet. No shouts. No pounding feet. He’s safe.

In his hand the four bananas.

Forbidden