moment aria

Wandering in splendid sunshine through the streets of that stuttering dynamo which is the city of Dublin.
Shuttered shop fronts everywhere contrasting with the drunken light heartedness of the citizenry.
Civil service protestors outside parliament cheerily chanting that they have suffered enough and will take no more pay cuts.
Winos sheltering in doorways.
Sexy young ones emerging from the gates of Trinners in wondrous states of deshabille.
Sweet ironic panoplay of life.
Dublin may be shabby, drunk and delusional, but I suppose it's still my Jerusalem.
On Kildare Street I almost collided with an old man striding towards me.
We both halted.
He looked shook.
Without meaning to, I stared.
He stared back.
It was former Prime Minister Bertie Aherne.
How the mighty had fallen.
A few days ago a tribunal of enquiry into Ireland's generic corruption had branded him a chiselling little crook.
As we looked at one another the words of Emily Dickinson's poem came to me:
"A great hope fell,
You heard no noise,
The ruin was within."
Still we stared.
It can only have been for a moment.
The moment stretched.
He couldn't know me.
Although one of my articles ten years ago in a now defunct newspaper called the Leinster Leader had led him to sack his Mumbly Joe Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy.
The article had been a skit likening Bertie Aherne to Julius Caesar and McCreevey to the assassin Cassius.
The salient bit came when McCreevy stabbed Bertie with a cry of: "Speak hands for me. And try to speak a bit more clearly than my mouth."
Ah noble readers.
I have altered the fate of nations.
And no one knows me.
Back on Kildare Street the universe was standing still.
The moment passed.
Mr Aherne collected himself, broke my stare, and each of us wandered off in opposite directions through the beautiful city we both have ruined.