Poems by
Bernard Gilhooly
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Sunday



The road seemed to go downhill for miles, polished in sunlight,

between the long terraces of houses. Beyond it the next hill

towered; half-way up I could see Bucknall church among its

trees. That was near where we lived.




Apart from a man on a bicycle, wobbling wearily uphill, the

road was empty. He must be hot, I thought. Two children crossed

by the closed and shuttered butcher's shop. A dog wandered

senselessly from pavement to road, then back again; finally

flopped in the gutter, pink tongue hanging.




Sunday, mid-afternoon and we stood by the bus stop. No sign of

the bus, any bus. The ice-cream we were eating was so cooling in

the August heat. The ice-cream shop must have been the only one

open in Hanley on that Sunday afternoon in the mid-1930's.




Suddenly, in all that somnolent silence, Mother spoke. “I feel

so sinful,” she said, gazing at her ice-cream cornet.




You see we never bought anything, not even a newspaper, on

Sunday. Sunday was God's special day, a day for chapel, morning

and evening, for Sunday school morning and early afternoon.




And I had nagged and grizzled until she had gone into the ice-

cream shop.




I was eight. I felt guilty.

I still do.









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