At Swim, Two Boys

“You asked me earlier were there many of us about. The question for my friend was, were there any of us at all. The world would say that we did not exist, that only our actions, our habits, were real, which the world called our crimes or our sins. But Scrotes began to think that we did indeed exist. That we had a nature our own, which was not another’s perverted or turned to sin. Our actions could not be crimes, he believed, because they were the expression of a nature, of an existence even. Which came first, he asked, the deed or the doer? And he began to answer that, for some, it was the doer.”

“Which tales are these now?”
“Don’t ask me. The Holy Band of Thesbians.”
“Of Thebes,” said MacMurrough. “The Sacred Band.”
“All lovey-dovey dying together. Don’t you know he’s dippy over you? He takes anything you say at face. That’s a kid you’re telling that to. He don’t know it’s stories.”
“Doyler, he’s the same age as you. Besides, I grew up on tales like that.”
“Aye and you’re some example.”
“What are you talking about? The entire world grows up on those stories. Only difference is, I told him the truth, that they were lovers, humping physical fellows.” Yes, and Jim had grasped instinctively that significance: that more than stories, they were patterns of the possible. And I think, how happier my boyhood should have been, had somebody—Listen, boy, listen to my tale—thought to tell me the truth. Listen while I tell you, boy, these men loved and yet were noble. You too shall love, body and soul, as they; and there shall be a place for you, boy, noble and magnificent as any. Hold true to your love: these things shall be.
Instead of finding out for yourself, with a dictionary in a dark corner, by which time it’s just one other lie you’ve nailed them in on the sallady path of youth.

“We’ll be asked to fight for Ireland, sure I know that.”
“But what is Ireland that you should want to fight for it?”
“Sure I know that too.” He raised a shoulder, his head inclined then turned: an attempt to shrug shake and nod, all the same time. When he was shy or self-conscious of something he would say, his body would often fail him. “It’s Doyler,” he said.
“Doyler is your country?”
“It’s silly, I know. But that’s how I feel. I know Doyler will be out, and where would I be but out beside him? I don’t hate the English and I don’t know do I love the Irish. But I love him. I’m sure of that now. And he’s my country.”

—Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literatures for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light.
"—For only with pride may a man prosper. With pride, all things follow. Without he have pride he is a shadowy skulk whose season is night."