One Sunday recently, with nothing to do for an hour in Dublin's Parnell Square, I took refuge in the Garden of Remembrance. There were perhaps 20 people there - natives, tourists, a group of Polish men. Most were alone or in couples, sitting around contemplating, reading newspapers or, in deference to the park's function as a place of reflection, conversing quietly.
But two individuals were not in reflective mood: a pair of black teenagers, probably immigrants, had decided to go for a swim in the cross-shaped pool that dominates the park. They had stripped down to their shorts and were happily diving for the coins previous visitors had thrown in the pool. Occasionally, they would suspend the trawl and begin splashing one another. Another youth put his head over the railings and asked them if they were coming to the swimming pool. "It's much better here," one of them shouted back.
They spent over half an hour like this, enjoying themselves hugely, oblivious of the dozen or so solemn Irish people observing them with silent disapproval.
When a park attendant arrived from somewhere and ordered them out, they left quietly, laughing and taking bows.
There was no sign of anything consciously disrespectful in their demeanour.
If you had asked them where they thought they were, they would probably have replied: "A public park?" More interesting was the response of the Irish people watching. A few could be heard grumbling quietly to companions, and one or two protested at being splashed, but none of us came even close to telling those boys where they were.
We might have told them that the Garden of Remembrance, designed by Daithí P. Hanly, honours the memory of those who died for Irish freedom. We might have pointed out that the sculpture which is the focal point of the space is based on the story of the Children of Lir, who according to legend were changed into swans; that it was designed by Oisín Kelly and unveiled to mark the golden jubilee of the Easter Rising, on Easter Monday 1966, when the park was officially opened by Éamon de Valera. We might have drawn their attention to the floor of the pool in which they were cavorting, which displays a mosaic pattern of blue-green waves interspersed with ancient weaponry. The spears are shown broken in recognition of the Celtic custom of throwing weapons into rivers and lakes as offerings to the gods when hostilities had ended.
We did not. Nor did we draw their attention to the inscription on the plaque close to the monument: "We saw a vision. In the darkness of despair we saw a vision. We lit the light of hope and it was not extinguished. In the deserts of discouragement we saw a vision. We planted the tree of valour and it blossomed. In the winter of bondage we saw a vision. We melted the snow of lethargy and the river of resurrection flowed from it. We sent our vision aswim like a swan on the river. The vision became a reality. Winter became summer. Bondage became freedom. And this we left to you as your inheritance.
O generations of freedom, remember us, the generations of the vision." But among the occupants of the Garden of Remembrance that afternoon, there was no essential difference to be noted between native, tourist or Pole.
At one level, the episode provides a rather perfectly formed metaphor of conventional attitude to immigrants. We suffer them to come here and then either resent them hugely or get off on condemning those who resent them, deciding that they have either no right to be here or an unconditional right to be here. What we never seem to do is outline to them our terms and conditions.
Maybe Ireland has finally become, as per Thomas Davis's prediction, a sand bank, as if "thrown up by some recent caprice of earth", on which various peoples reside without having much in common.
It's about collective ownership. Those dozen Irish people in the Garden of Remembrance that afternoon had gone there as individuals, perhaps each with a sense of what the place meant for him or her personally; but our presence there was perforce such a private matter that we could not rise to the public exhibition of outrage an intervention would have required. What words might we have used to tell those young men they were in sacred space? Sacred? Hallowed? Holy? Who could nowadays utter such words on this subject without irony? The certainty that would have been required had been chipped away at by four decades of inhumanity and a mess of psychic reactions to it.
At the back of my own mind as I watched the two boys swimming around was the shadow of a post-modern rationalisation: was this not one version of freedom aswim in Dublin on a September Sunday? Might not Pearse or Connolly have smiled benevolently at those two black swans and decided their project was completed? But then I had a vision of Dev's face and knew I was fooling myself.