Main Entrance to Kilmainham
Heavy, forbidding, cold, grey stone; high walling, metal railings,
unaccountable feelings of foreboding. The tall wooden door creaks
slowly open, creating a crack of light just wide enough to squeeze
through. The austere, narrow entranceway to this building generates
the numbness that is subconsciously anticipated in a prison.
Floors of cells rising upwards . . . .
Involuntary shivers and a feeling of apprehension propels you along
the narrow corridors into open doorways and onto stone and metal
staircases. This is Kilmainham - enforced residence of many Irish men
and women over the years. Now stark, cold and bereft of inhabitants, it
is easy to sense the earlier residents; the emotions of fear,
desperation, anguish, hate and anger still ooze from the walls and solid
wood and metal doors that denied freedom so emphatically. The metal
stairway in the communal area echoes still with the eerie footfalls of
occupants of earlier decades.
Solitary confinement
The cold stone cells, empty of any comfort or facility often lacked
light or access to fresh air. Narrow walkways - patrolled constantly -
slits in the doors that allowed food to pass to the prisoner, metal
piping that evokes the thought of tapped messages ringing around the
complex between its inmates. Even now the visitor feels unable, or
inhibited, to talk out loud - silence is the only solution in this
place.
No access to daylight
History springs to life vividly in the display areas - the sad,
devastated men and women with no solution but revolt; no light at the
end of these tunnel-like corridors; bleak prospects of nothing better to
look forward to - no hope for their children. The stark, enclosed
court yards, a few paces in each direction, that served as an exercise
area or execution point, seemed the only spots where light and air
briefly touched your face.
Empty now, but . . . . . .
Endless days of sameness and torture, pain and humiliation, sanity
retained only by a focus on hatred and retribution - and in many cases
an underlying sense of real conviction and idealism - knowing they were
innocent of all charges against them - at least in the philosophy of
love of country - if not in the creation of chaos and mayhem.
Kilmainham is a stark reminder that man’s inhumanity to man must end -
peaceful existence on this planet is essential, and would remove all
Kilmainhams from our environment - maybe - sometime - soon?
Desperation drives us all to the edge of existence - some step back, some step over.
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