ELEGY FOR EDDIE McCARTHY
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We had not seen each other in years
Since I was younger, learning all the names
Of men and tunes, and all the rules
Of sitting quietly until addressed, or (beyond hope)
Being asked to join the playing.

I remember you were there that night down in O'Reilly's
I played "Crossing the Shannon" with Joe Burke.
My fingers slipped and stumbled, but he said
I played it well...he liked the tune, he said,
And you agreed and shook my sweating hand.

The truth to tell, I had not thought of you in all that time - 
Not out of malice or neglect, but for the reason
That the mind and heart fill quickly 
And fleetingly with other things, as time and a removal 
And new faces crowd out the dimmer images
Until they pass themselves to some shadowy place 
Neither memory nor forgetting.

But when McGann said you had passed away
Or, in the colder words that hide both love and fear,
"We waked him last week,"
Then I recalled your cheerful face, never in my knowing
Without a smile, and the beer and a shot 
(Blackberry brandy if Cronin did the ordering)
And your bodhrán and clapper never far from you.

For years you sat and made your patient rhythm 
For the tunes played in a thousand pubs and gatherings 
By the greatest and the least. I often thought
If Christ Himself had decided to return to earth
In the middle of a hornpipe, you would have waited
To finish the tune right through to the two taps
Before you went to say hello.

And now you're bright and glorified, playing away
At that Session in some resplendent corner of Heaven
Where what is loved so much down here 
Comes to its perfection, as every musician knows.
Killoran's on one side of you, Seán McGlynn on the other
But Cronin's having a little trouble learning to fold his wings
And he says he can't get used to the golden fiddle
Even though he has his very own cherub
To tune it for him. As for you and your shining bodhrán,
You're only slightly happier than you were in the Bronx
(Theologians take note). Pray for us between tunes.

McCarthy, would you mind this little epitaph
I offer you as one musician to another?

You made us all sound good.


- Bill Black
June 1996