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June 05, 2005

Poetry in Motion

The number 15 bus arrives in front of me on Nassau St. I rustle through my pocket for change and then, to avoid stalling the queue behind me, simply throw €2 into the machine. The driver, who is reading a copy of Pride and Prejudice, prints me out my ticket and an 80c refund. Must be the Austin influence. Upstairs is, as usual, empty save two people. One, a man in a leather jacket. He’s unfamiliar with the city so he sits at the very front to look out for his stop. Two, a young lady wearing fashionable glasses. Her hands are rested upon an old-fashioned hatbox on her lap. I sit three seats from the very back of the bus on the right. And then the journey to Rathmines begins. We turn the corner at Harry B’s. A piano bar where I will one day play Jamie Cullen’s ‘All at sea’ to the urban literati. Around the corner, at the entrance to a large grey building, a crowd of morning coffee-drinkers have gathered. One of them looks up at me as the bus drives by. Then the Dail on my left. I strain to spot Pat Rabbitte or a TV3 news reporter. We stop at the Kildare St. bus stop where three people board. Two join us upstairs. The bus pulls off again. A Fed Ex van drives by. We turn left, at the Shelburne where I once interviewed the Easter Bunny for the college magazine. On our right is St. Stephens Green, where, on sunny mornings I will skip the bus, walk down Grafton St. and greet the ducks in the park. But not today. We drive onward down a straight piece of road. All along our left are magnificent Georgian houses with different coloured doors. Along our right is the south side of St. Stephens Green.

Each morning as we pass, one or two cyclist enthusiasts sit on the pavement. Oiled and black. Like their bikes. We stop at the traffic lights in front of the most marvellous building in Dublin. It is the ‘Bank of Scotland (Ireland)’ building. On top waves the red and white Maple leaf flag of Canada. Sometimes I try and take a picture of it with my camera. Onward again, past the UCD faculty of medicine. After that, we take the second right onto Adelaide Rd. with its beautiful big trees. In the autumn the path is awash with the colours of orange, yellow and red from their fallen leaves. This leads us up to St. James House for the obligatory ten-minute traffic delay due to the Luas track construction. Forward at last past the exotic Indian shops with names like the ‘Taj Mahal’. We stop again at the next bus stop beside the billboard advertisements to be joined on top by a schoolgirl. We proceed to the crowning moment of our journey. The climb up Portobello Bridge, where the red-bricked clock tower of Rathmines comes into view, triumphantly flanked by the Dublin Mountains. This day is going to be a good one.

Trains, Buses & Automobiles by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist (page 6)

Posted by LiamG at June 5, 2005 08:50 PM