Bogtown Impossible
One morning in the springtime of 1985
the people of the neighborhood of Bog decided,
all at once, to cease drinking alcohol
and began chanting together for freedom instead,
chanting of freedom and love and togetherness in undulating unison,
chanting like early christians at mass in the wilderness,
like early christians calling down The Assumption.
*
Midday came and went
for the first time in decades
without one drop of drink in the neighbourhood
as the people of Bog were chanting along
with ever greater harmony,
with ever greater melody,
with ever greater enthusiasm.
Even as they chanted
the men took turns to hug each other,
hug each other long and hard
and tearfully,
crying tears of release,
tears of return,
tears of purification.
*
The chanting and hugging also helped
the men and women ride over the seizures and shakes
and the Hamlin of rats that had poured
from the alcohol sewers inside them
in the throes of delirium tremens, which passed.
*
Then each one of the clarified men
lay down on their bellies like serpents
in prostrate penitence
before the women and children they
had treated as slaves and spare toilets for so many years.
There was so much more weeping
weeping of joy and acceptance,
rivers of rage and forgiveness
as the chanting went on
higher and higher
and still more absorbing and sonorous.
*
Night fell.
The neighbourhood of Bog was assaulted
by the enraged allies of alcohol
at both of it’s exits.
The exit leading to the Bogtown
was attacked by publicans and priests
bearing stakes and clubs and maces and knives.
The exit leading to the west and the coast
and disappearance to Washington
was attacked, with the usual vigour,
by Gardai with batons and gas
alongside schoolteachers with belts and canes and long
bamboos full of splinters.
But none of these had reckoned on the mongrels
on the stray dogs, melancholy, vicious,
of the neighbourhood of Bog
and who had also stopped drinking,
stopped drinking and sniffling and wanting to die,
wanting to die but being too broken
too cowardly too toxic dependent
to actually kill themselves.
No, the assailants had not reckoned on dogs,
who, by stopping drinking, had become more like what wolves
might have been had man not existed
or superior aliens with street-fighting genius
and while the people of the blighted neighbourhood of Bog
continued in beautiful unison
with their now approximately Byzantine chanting
these dogs tore all their assailants to strips
and devoured them down to the marrow and bowels.
For the very first time the neighbourhood of Bog
belonged to the creatures who lived there.
*
Only till news got up to the capital,
where the distillers and brewers in charge of the land
met right away to plot the destruction of Bog.
They sent all their battalions with Poitín grenades
and squadrons of copters to spray
all the Boggers with whiskey and stout
but the Boggers kept chanting for freedom and love
and despite the all-sides unending bombardment
left not one drop of the poison get onto their tongues.
*
Besides, the allies of alcohol
had not reckoned on the roads
that they themselves had built
for the purposes of distributing their alcohol
but which had also stopped drinking...
and the stone cold sober and pitiless roads
simply flipped over and buried
the alcohol armies upside down and alive
as they convoyed and marched.
*
Neither had President Gin and the Chief Cider Minister
war-gamed the crows or the wind or the clouds or the fog
who each had quit drinking at the same time as
the neighbours of Bog
and conspired now to bring
each of the choppers down blazing.
*
The disease ridden shacks
the Boggers had lived in collapsed;
the enormous toxic factory in which some of the
the men had occasionally laboured
for alcohol
dissolved into dust;
the little church blew up;
the corner shop, the primary school,
the telephone poles, the roadlights, the walls and the steps
all sucked into sinkholes that closed.
*
Then with the help of the wind and the dogs and the crows
the victorious people of the disadvantaged neighbourhood of Bog
closed over with woodland
the village and all of their region
and closed over with woodland
all the roads (that had flipped over and
buried the alcohol armies)
for woods are the way-of-forgetting
all the roads and the regions,
woods are the way of back-to-beginnings
the best way of starting again.
*
From then on the victorious people of Bog
would live on and chant in their freedom
in the midst of this forest of yew and of oak
of aspen and hawthorn and birch
trees which would mind them
and raise them as children of gods
who’d respond to their love and their communal chanting
and where the free people who used be from Bog
would never be spied never be caught
never again be entrapped in a neighbourhood
as long as they stayed off the alcohol.