GRAMMUDDER for Ann McCardy Murphy 1943. You hummed "Over There" absently, but another war throbbed in memory You poured Irish tea into white enamel cups steaming pale rinds of smoke into casks of afternoon silence. I ate scones and heard pipers, Robert Emmett's last speech on the dock. Fenians, republicans lined up, your brother Jack beaten with a horse crop, bleeding in his own velvet fields, the brocade lands of Mullingar. Your stories held onto that world, useless as the blind collie sleeping at your feet. You gave stories like hidden tongues that might speak later on, might wake a partisan heart I have always remained Irish, missing something I cannot name. It has given me an edge. -- "Grammudder" by Renny Golden, from "The Next Parish Over," ed. Patricia Monaghan, pub. New Rivers Press. (Note - Mullingar is in Co. Westmeath).