Eibhear Walshe: Asfódelo, esa flor verdosa

Resumen

Seriously? Eibhear Walshe has – left us? Died? How can this be, I ask myself on a bright, dappled-with-light-and-shade July day in 2024 when news filters through. Eibhear, bright asphodel, mentor to so many of us, enthusiastic and talented academic, but above all as far as I’m concerned, writer, novelist, has departed our company and vanished out of this material existence for the Elysian fields. I cannot absorb it.

In the months since his death, I still cannot believe it, possibly because we met only three or four times a year and I wouldn’t expect to see him very often. I’m never again going to say, oh I must call Eibhear, I’m never again going to meet him in the café of the National Library, where we shared conversations, ranging from the serious to the seriously wicked and amusing. Eibhear was – and I say this with care – an excellent purveyor of news, in the best possible sense of that word. He was discreet, but he also knew how to reveal in confidence the various levels of human foible that sometimes go unspoken. He rarely spoke ill of anybody, and his news and responses were graced with kindness and understanding. Yet the time has come to face my thoughts and consider (in some small way) the fine life of one I’ve known for thirty-four years.