[Republished from the story collection, THE PLEASANT LIGHT OF DAY (Penguin 2009)] I have kids of my own now and live in the centre of our nation, where its heart beats strong and true, and sometimes it is hard to remember the life I left behind. I am reborn, but the born again have first…

It was only my second day on the job and the bus had been slow. I was in a right tizzy as I rushed along the corridor, afraid I’d be late. Just as I reached the clock-in machine, there he was, right beside me – the life and soul of the factory floor, or so…

One of the first stories I remember reading and loving from my Irish childhood is Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince (1888). It begins: High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright…

Like most passionate readers, I’ve developed my own habits of critical reading. Younger, I read for the intensity of the experience, for a seamless drop into an alternate universe. Later, when I became serious about writing, I began to read to understand technique. I read to admire and analyze and mimic, keeping a part of…

tokyo fishermen, 2004, Margaret Fletcher Saine +++ Ayumi squints through an opening in the branches at the fishermen on their rocks beside the pond. Without her glasses she cannot be certain it is really him. At 11:00? On a Tuesday? No…no, no. Hideo is at work. In the blue suit she picked up from the…

Familistère: (architecture) a 19th century housing structure, designed according to the socialist utopian ideals of collective work and social enlightenment. + The entryway is narrow and runs between an old church transformed into a depot during the Revolution and a relatively bourgeois house. The land register from 1860 indicates this place was once a familistère.…

Listen to “morning on the mountain” 0:00 Heavy feet, cold dark field. Husssh. Stiff boots, stamping steps. Shhhh. 0:12 Open the barn door. Scattering hooves. Stumble foot and sleepy rustle. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Light the lantern and… swish the switch. His sleepy herd, waking, hesitant. Out now, all of you. You, too. Go on, go.…

You must forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, for having only a German heart. It happens to beat, “bum-bum” – in a correct two-beat. But the Sanskrit heartbeat is a triad, a beautiful, “kikira” while the English apparently beats in four-four time with its “pitter-patter”. — Helmut Braem, “Languages Are Comparable Yet Unique”. +++ Four weeks…

Translation is the art of failure                                               — Umberto Eco +++ The old man put on a fresh shirt. The girls would be arriving in time for lunch. It was sunny and he opened the curtains in the kitchen to give the room more light. This was March, and spring was just beginning its war…

St. Tropez, 2010, Margaret Fletcher Saine +++ The door closes and the children are gone. Off to play in the twilight. Not children, she reminds herself. No longer children. She does not race to the hotel window, to see whether the young man already has his arm around her daughter. It does not matter if…

Régine Dupuis lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a relatively comfortable but charmless building. From her balcony she watched, not without a certain thrill, the arrival of her new, young neighbors. Régine had not worked for thirty years. The alimony her ex-husband gave her was ample enough to support the simple…

Helen climbed the staircase, counting the steps to the door out of habit. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. A few years before, struggling with their boxes and furniture on moving day, she and Sam had briefly cursed their choice of the small house on the hill with its stone staircase winding up from the sidewalk. “We’ll do this…