Bernard O'Donoghue

the old thin ache you thought that you'd forgotten, more smoke, admittedly, than flame, less tears than rain, and the whole business neither here nor there, and therefore home.

Thank you.

And finally, this one is called ,, which is a phrase used a number of times in the Aeneid, in versions of the Aeneid, and describing when a person from this life, Aeneas in this case, goes in his living body into the afterworld and encounters his father, Anchises, and his wife, Creusa.

And he wants to embrace them.

But of course, he can't, because they are just shades.

They're shadows.

And he is taking shadows for real things.

And I'm contrasting that with the situation common in my childhood, and perhaps probably less so now, of siblings living together in old age, living these very dignified, reserved kinds of lives, not going in for displays of affection.

When I went to England, the English thought they were kind of reserved, not compared to the country people I grew up amongst.

Terraconartus.

Sister and brother nearly 60 years they'd farmed together, never touching once.

Of late, she'd been coping with a pain in her back, realisation dawning slowly that it grew differently from the warm ache that resulted periodically from heaving churns onto the milking stand.

She wondered about the doctor.

When finally she went, it was too late, even for chemotherapy.

And still she wouldn't have got round to telling him, except that one night, watching television, it got so bad she gasped and struggled up holding her waist.

Do you want a hand?

he asked, taking a step towards her.

I can manage, she answered, feeling for the stairs.

Three times like that he tried to reach her.

But being so little practiced in such gestures, three times the hand fell back and took its place on moving at his side.