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This grand old house  (pictured)   on Main Street, Chapelizod, in the city of Dublin, wouldn't look out of place on Merrion or Mountjoy Square. Sadly though, its windows are broken and steel girders wrap around it to stop its collapse. In 2021 An Taisce (the National Trust for Ireland) listed it among Ireland's Top 10 Most-at-Risk buildings. If the house were a person, it would be described as close to death with a 'do not resuscitate' order placed upon it.  An amazing feature of the house's history is that it is the setting for Sheridan Le Fanu's 1863 novel The House by the Churchyard. Per Wikipedia: 'The work inspired several later Irish writers, including James Joyce and Bram Stoker, who drew upon its Gothic horror and suspense features for their own novels. It has been considered by many critics as a precursor to the psychological horror genre.'  So,   in terms of literary cachet the house is up there with Joyce's House of the Dead on Usher's...

 

Castor cold star in that constellation Flickers by his twin in combination Above the grey air of dusty fumes Above long cycles to empty rooms, Cold star is a brother of Pollux There's a part of him in all of us. Once while caught in the seasons Coldly (aw!) without the person Following the tracks up beyond the wood factory, I'm sure I felt satisfied  And stooped to the earth in heated awareness. ©Brian Ahern 1988

 

                                                  It begins. November 2017. He read the following: 'with such a look of bliss on his face that the people realized he had been transfigured by a holy ecstasy'.  I see you lithe and watery-eyed, flitting and flecked from activity, your fine bounce and flawless stride pump the rivers of my ecstasy. What's gone wrong, what's brought on such a massive change? From highness on the wine of life to hungover on earthly strife? Gliding gulls in the grey sky. Dublin December morning. You're the golden summit of what comes up here to live every single day.  He worried that he was becoming numerically dyslexic. He would seek out Catalan lessons in the new year. It was the day when Unwin and Quintana came by. One of those recurring dreams I have set on Abercorn Road. In a technology trance he thought of colonies on the ...