Matthew Sweeney

I’m going back to the ice hotel, this time under a false name as I need to stay there again.

I’ll stand in the entrance hall, marvelling at this year’s design, loving the way it can’t be the same

because ice melts and all here is ice – the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the seats in the lobby, the bed.

Not that I lay on naked ice, but on the skins of reindeers,...

St Francis didn’t speak German to the robins he fed, nor did Scott as he trudged through the snow, but I did as I crossed the border to Alsace-Lorraine all that winter of ‘77, to dine on choucroute, stock up on wine – bootfuls of it – and bring back ripe munster to stink out the shared fridge on that final 13th floor of the Studenten Wohnheim, from whose...

Why does the horse stand there staring at the horizon? Is it waiting on some rider arriving by car from the airport? Isn’t its grass enough for it and the freedom of the field?

Oblivious to midges and nightfall it snorts and hoofs the ground, tail tossing like a fly swat, but those big sad eyes still focus on that bend in the road.

Perhaps it dreams of galloping all the way to the...

Stay awhile. Don’t go just yet. The sirens are roaming the streets, the stabbing youths are out in packs, there’s mayhem in the tea leaves. You’re much better off staying here. I have a Bordeaux you’ll like, let’s open it. (I’ve a second bottle, too.) And a goat’s cheese to fast for, also a blue from the Vale of Cashel – and the source...

Two cars arrived at the airport, both of them to collect Cecil. The two drivers stood on the concourse outside the exit from customs, each holding up Cecil’s name. His bag was last on the carousel, so when the glass door released him only these two were waiting. He went up to one, then the other. He left his bag on the ground. The two were trying to persuade him that they were...