Vinegar Hill

Colm Tóibín

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781800171619
• eBook ISBN:
  9781800171626
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2021.

From the highly acclaimed author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín's first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion and belonging through a modern lens.

Fans of Colm Tóibín's novels, including The Magician, The Master and Nora Webster, will relish the opportunity to re-encounter Tóibín in verse. Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects – politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, memory and a fading past, and facing mortality.

The poems reflect a life well-travelled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, readers will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín's unique lens.

Within this rich collection of poems written over the course of several decades, shot through with keen observation, emotion and humour, Tóibín offers us lines and verses to provoke, ponder and cherish.

60

DUBLIN: SATURDAY, 23 MAY, 2015

The years of excitement had gone.

They were almost sixty now; both lived alone.

They texted each other sometimes

And met mid-week in a quiet bar.

Once or twice in the days of Minsky’s

Or in a sauna called The Gym

They had got together.

But it didn’t mean much. It made them friends.

But what to do now that gay marriage had been

Voted for by the Irish people?

That Saturday, they met for lunch

In a new café in Phibsboro

And afterwards walked via Berkeley Street

And Blessington Street to O’Connell Street

And then to Dublin Castle where they

Found the crowd already assembled in the Yard,

All brightly smiling, all in groups,

Cheering for this new-found freedom.

There were more lesbians than they expected

And they were used to the fact that

At gay events now the guys were young.

Anyone middle-aged had retreated

As though in shame to the suburbs,

Learning to take things slow,61

The gay past coming to life only

When they spotted someone from the old days

On a street in the city centre

And gave a brusque nod and passed on.

On a platform there were politicians

And speeches through a bad PA system.

Same-sex couples kissed for the cameras.

‘Same sex,’ one man said to the other,

‘Used to mean that you were fed up

Having the same sex all the time

And went to a park or a public toilet

For a bit of novelty.’

They laughed, but it was no joke.

They knew no one here at all.

They were the only ones bored.

‘We could become conspicuous,’ one said,

‘For being not gay enough.

That is how the world has turned.

The Minister is gay, the Fianna Fáil

Man too, and Ursula Halligan.

And all we can tell them is

That things were not always so.

Hard to imagine now being frightened

To go into Rice’s or BD’s

And hovering around outside

At closing time, in case

There was a chance. But

There never was. Chances62

Came by chance in those years

Like the Friday night in the Manhattan

I got talking to a soldier

And took him home.

Unimaginable the luck the fun!

And both of us sober enough

To go through the night

And into the morning.

No sign of him here. Or the fellow

In t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• September
• In Los Angeles
• Curves
• Mysterium Lunae
• The Long Trick
• Two Grecos
• Thunder All Night
• From the Catalan
• High Up
• August
• Anton Webern in Barcelona
• Object on a Table
• Orchard
• Cush Gap, 2007
• Morning
• Open House
• Blue Shutters
• Shadows
• The Marl Hole
• The Nun
• The Rosary
• Vinegar Hill
• Bishops
• Kennedy in Wexford
• Vatican II
• Face
• From the Air
• The Torturer’s Art
• American Poem
• Life
• Dublin: Saturday, 23 May, 2015
• Gellert Baths, Spring 1990
• Dead Cinemas
• Variations on a Scene from Maeve Binchy
• I Ran Away
• The House
• Two or Three
• Emily Kngwarreye in Dublin
• In Washington DC
• In the White House
• Late
• November in America
• Lines Written After the Second Moderna Vaccine at Dodgers’ Stadium Los Angeles, 27 February 2021
• December
• Two Plus One
• In Memoriam
• Ritual
• Father & Son
• In San Clemente
• Eccles Street
• Orpheus
• Small Wonder
• Canal Water
• Tiepolo
• Prayer to St Agnes
• Eve
• Arafat in Tunis
• Jericho
• Valentin’s Prayer
• Pangur
• Because the Night
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright