Initially, like the worst irony, alcohol dispels them. Leastways you don’t remember. Then, of course, it fuels and powder-kegs them to the ninth level. Not a level on which to linger. The Irish for dreams is broinglóidí, a beautiful gentle sound. Of the many impossibles, a drinker prays most in that direction. In vain. I never dream of Sutton. Sure, I think about him most days, but he remains in the daylight hours. Thank Christ.

I needed Merton and a pint. Not necessarily in that order. Headed for Charlie Byrne’s, a second-hand bookshop. It is the bookshop. During my apprenticeship with the librarian Tommy Kennedy, as he shaped and nurtured my reading, he told me about Sylvia Beach. In Paris, in the true glory days, her bookshop held court to

Joyce

Hemingway

Fitzgerald

Gertrude Stein

Ford Maddox Ford

Mr Kennedy’s voice would get such a sound of longing in the telling. As he recounted the near mythic atmosphere, I could smell the Gauloise, the aroma of pure French coffee. Being young, naturally, I asked,

“Did you go there, Mr Kennedy?”

With such loss in his eyes, he said,

“No, no…I didn’t.”

One of my embracing poems is Howl by Ginsberg. Nobody I ever told ever seemed surprised. I guess they’d heard me howl too often. It travelled back from London in the pocket of my jacket. The other travel book was The Hound of Heaven. It had been a collectors’ item, bound in calf with gold trim. When I told Tommy Kennedy of my career choice – the guards – he’d been bitterly disappointed. My farewell present from him was the Thompson book. Nights of drunkenness had marred that beautiful volume.

Charlie Byrne’s comes close to Tommy’s ideal. Some years before, I’d been lurking in the crime section. A student had a beautiful American edition of Walt Whitman. He was peering at the price. Charlie, passing, said,