Lines Written While Jogging by the Grand Canal, Dublin

Now that I'm settled into a routine in the new place I've started running again. Usually straight after work I bolt home, change and get out the door before I get lazy.

Unfortunately I'm no longer living next door to the Phoenix Park so I've had to seek out new tramping grounds and the main focus of my attentions has been El Grande Canal.

According to Wikipedia:

The Grand Canal (Irish: An Chanáil Mhór) is the southernmost of a pair of canals that connect Dublin, in the east of the country, with the River Shannon in the west, the two canals nearly encircling Dublin's inner city. Its sister canal on the Northside of Dublin is the Royal Canal.

According to Wikipedia also, it looks like this:



Hhhhmmm.

Now maybe the Grand Canal looks like this near the leafy suburbs of Portobello and Ranelagh...in fact, yes, it definitely looks like this there but in my neck of the woods it's less idyllic.

My route usually consists of heading up Tyrconnell Road to where the canal passes by the Blackhorse pub and Luas stop and heading east along the canal past the Drimnagh, Goldenbridge and Suir Road luas stops.

Ah Drimnagh.... Yes that's the place you hear on the news from time to time - a stabbing here, a shooting there, the daily drug bust. A place with which I was utterly unfamiliar a few months ago is now my neighbourhood or 'hood if you will.

The canal is this area looks a little more like this:



In fact when you google 'Drimnagh' 'Canal' you get a picture of this from a Flickr account:


Ah it's not that bad really - there are still trees and greenery, ducks and swans, pretty locks and people walking their dogs. There's just added traffic cones, trolleys and other rubbish in the water, added winos and junkies hanging out by the banks and the melodious ring of squad car sirens in the air. I'm beginning to see the same people out at the same time every day - one gentlemen with can of cider in hand shouts encouragement as I pass and berates me if I've given up running by the time I pass him on the way back - just what I need!

At the moment there are plenty of other joggers and dog-walkers around, kids swimming by the lock at the Suir Road junction and families feeding the ducks and swans so it feels safe enough. Once November comes around, however, and it's dark early in the evenings I don't think it will be safe for a woman on her own but maybe you could say that about the Grand Canal as a whole or anywhere in Dublin really.
I hate winter.

Meanwhile it is summer (today anyway) and while it's not so 'stilly, greeny' as when Patrick Kavanagh wrote about it - not with the Luas and cars trundling by non-stop and no more does the barge come up from 'far-flung towns' like Athy, in parts it's still 'leafy-with-love' on a July afternoon....

Lines Written on a Seat
on the Grand Canal, Dublin

'Erected to the memory of Mrs. Dermot O'Brien'

O commemorate me where there is water,
Canal water, preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother
Commemorate me thus beautifully
Where by a lock niagarously roars
The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence
Of mid-July. No one will speak in prose
Who finds his way to these Parnassian islands.
A swan goes by head low with many apologies,
Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges -
And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far-flung towns mythologies.
O commemorate me with no hero-courageous
Tomb - just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.

-Patrick Kavanagh

Thanks to Wikipedia and Matthew S. for the Grand Canal pics.