Nightmare Pastoral
Nightmare Pastoral
for Philip Coleman
It is a little known lie,
too absurd to be considered a rumour,
that the late South American writer, Robert Bolano
spent a week on vacation
in a remote but unidentified
west of ireland village
in 1969
on his way from a riot in Mexico
to a riot in Paris.
In the often unfathomable code
of the young poet, later novelist’s, diaries
the unknown village
is referred to as ‘Ballylonely’
or, two or three times,
as 'Baloney'.
On the day every screen in the world
shows the US stick a flag in the moon
over and over
Bolano gets destroyed along
with all the local gawkers
in a pub and general store
the writer disguises as'Paddy’s'.
Later that night, fitfully asleep in unnamed
and unfamiliar lodgings,
he has a terrible dream
which he scribbles out
in a feverish rush upon waking.
In the dream two pissed priests are raping
a nine year old girl
up a boreen (he says 'grassy lane')
in the back of a van
not too far from a petrol station.
When they have done with the rape
they strangle and dump
her out the back door
and drive off, stopping for petrol
and cigarettes.
The two guards-
he calls them cops-
who lead the investigation
that follows
are about to move in and arrest
one of the priests
when they are told
in no uncertain terms
by the powers that be
to close the case
and forget all about it.
The two priests are hauled in by the bishop
whom Bolano describes,
in the indecipherable language of dreams,
as having a face like a deck of cards.
The bishop orders them offstage to missions
in remotest Africa
with the ringing admonition
to “bring the lord’s word
as well as his wrath to the savages”.
Next morning, back in Paddy's,
Bolano describes his nightmare
to a pair of local sages
nursing post-moon-landing cures at the counter.
‘Bad Pint you were after’ says one.
A diagnosis confirmed by his friend:
'Bad pint.
The last of the barrel.
The mindbending dregs.'
(This last phrase, hardly Irish,
Bolano draws a line under.)
A hot toddy was all that he wanted
to settle his nerves.
‘Teddy?’ says the Latino, mishearing.
‘Whiskey, that is ’ said
Paddy, a bit of a know-all,
from his leather throne
behind the counter:
'I'll put on the kettle.
First one's the house's'.
'He means it's free'
translated one of the sages
'as a bird' said the other,
'a little bird
in an endless wood
in the middle of winter.'
Then, writes Bolano ,
still paralytic at this stage
no doubt or otherwise
out of his mind,
the two seers and Paddy the vintner
started whistling not like
birds of paradise or swallows
or like starlings or even like crows
but like vultures.'
Bolano drank the hot whiskey, a double. Then another.
That day he ends up getting very very drunk
and, so he tells it,
arrested
for his own safety
and to preserve public order.
This is the kind of thing
he would later go on
to write about.
***********
Nightmare Pastoral is from my 2010 Collection, Invitation to a Sacrifice.