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Last modified: July 7th 2001
"Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!" (Yeats, Under Ben Bulben, 1938)
If there's one country that touches the heart of this cool, modern
computer specialist it is the island of the stereotype greenishness.
It may just be the projection of the sum of the desires of modern man not so
hard-boiled after all into one of the last somewhat remote corners of Europe. Perhaps
however, there is more to it.
And I believe there is something touching in the tranquility of an autumn sunset watched from a
rock above Doolin harbour. There is something in the sadness of Irish mothers, having
lost children in a fight without winners, something in watching slick New York business
women hasten through Newgrange or Poulnabrone and utterly fail to comprehend.
Part of the magic undoubtedly arises from the venerable antiquity of the Irish culture
where the neolithical monuments of a still very live history define what old means and
put time itself into perspective. Small wonder people like Wilde,
Yeats, or Swift walked the surface of this part of the planet.
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