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The Simple Wisdom: Visiting Thomas Kinsella

In late June of , it was still cold at Glendalough. My wife Beverly and I wore the winter jackets we’d almost left back home in Oregon, where it had been in eighty-five degrees. Glendalough, whose name means “the glen of the two lakes,” was founded as a monastery in County Wicklow by St. Kevin in the year . Isolated and tranquil a millennium-and-a-half ago, Glendalough now is crowded with tourists, even on a day like this. Low clouds heightened rather than obscured the lush green. We looked at the gateway arches and the cashel; at the ancient burial stones, some flat to the ground, others lined up against the wall like sentinels; at the great round tower that’s supposed to be the best-preserved in all of Ireland. But my eyes kept returning to the man beside me, just turned sixtysix, his remaining hair and thick beard pure white, as he bent over the same tombs he must have shown hundreds of visitors by now but was still willing to show us. I’d dreamed of visiting him for almost a quarter century. It had been that long since I last saw him, though we’d written and spoken often, always promising to get together. As we’d left his house in nearby Laragh, Beverly snapped an unposed picture of him striding toward his wife and their Volvo, coat and umbrella gripped in one hand. I thought I saw it then, and when we got home and had the pictures developed it was the first thing I looked for. Unbelievable. Beverly had captured something rarely seen in print. Thomas Kinsella was smiling.