Elegant Report

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
if there's fire on the mountain
or lightning and storm
and a god speaks from the sky.

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

Three-Piece

1. A Suit

"I'll make you one," he said, "and balance it

Perfectly on you." And I could almost feel

The plumb line of the creased tweed hit my heel,

My shoulders like a spar or a riding scale

Under the jacket, my whole shape realigned

In ways that suited me down to the ground.

So although a suit was the last thing that I needed

I wore his words and told him that I'd take it

And told myself it was going for a song.

2. A Tie

She made

me one

of hard

silk thread,

string-thin,

tight skein

crocheted

by hand,

close-knit

and strict

as cyng-

hanedd,

all a-

glitter

like rain

on fern

or em-

erald ems

or fine

ground jade,

my thin

green line

for which

I grat-

ias

ago

in Lat-

in quotes

(with gen-

der change

in sub-

ject and

tense change

in verb):

nihil

tegit

quod non

ornat,

and trans-

late thus

(to tie

the knot),

"She puts

a shine

on all

she puts

her hand

to." Love

and thanks

again

to her.

3. A Coat

"We're not a mile off it," I heard him say, with an ought

Dragging and lengthening out the sound of that "not" ?

For Mr Simpson, though he worked in Magherafelt,

Was from Antrim and glottal and more of a Pict than a Celt.

But an Ulsterman. An Ulsterman for sure,

Calling a spade a spade and the door the dure

And any child he was fitting with clothes the wean.

My father poked his cattle-dealer's cane

Into the coats on the coatrack for the only one

That took his fancy and when I had put it on,

"We're not a mile off it," Mr Simpson said again,

Uneager and sure of the sale; and confidentially then,

"Ulster, you know, is the name for an overcoat.

The Oxford English Dictionary even gives it.

Ulster." He paused and he mused. "All over the world

Good cloth and good wear and the whole of your money's

worth."

I hear him still when I reach deep into the long

Cold draught of the sleeve of some ulster I'm fitting on

And wish my hand would come through and beyond all that

Deep glottal purchase and worth, like the virtual flight

Of The Red Hand of Ulster beyond the beyond of its myth,

Back to its unbloodied cuff at its unsevered wrist,

Flexing its fingers again and combing the air

And a wild, post-Shakespearean streel of gallowglass hair.

Bogland

for T. P. Flanagan

We have no prairies

To slice a big sun at evening--

Everywhere the eye concedes to

Encrouching horizon

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye

Of a tarn. Our unfenced country

Is bog that keeps crusting

Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton

Of the Great Irish Elk

Out of the peat set it up

An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under

More than a hundred years

Was recovered salty and #CCCCFF.

The ground itself is kind #CCCCFF butter

Melting and opening underfoot

Missing its last definition

By millions of years.

They'll never dig coal here

Only the waterlogged trunks

Of great firs soft as pulp.

Our pioneers keep striking

Inwards and downwards

Every layer they strip

Seems camped on before.

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless.

Casualty

He would drink by himself

And raise a weathered thumb

Towards the high shelf

Calling another rum

And #CCCCFFcurrant without

Having to raise his voice

Or order a quick stout

By a lifting of the eyes

And a discreet dumb-show

Of pulling off the top;

At closing time would go

In waders and peaked cap

Into the showery dark

A dole-kept breadwinner

But a natural for work.

I loved his whole manner

Sure-footed but too sly

His deadpan sidling tact

His fisherman's quick eye

And turned observant back.

Incomprehensible

To him my other life.

Sometimes on the high stool

Too busy with his knife

At a tobacco plug

And not meeting my eye

In the pause after a slug

He mentioned poetry.

We would be on our own

And always politic

And shy of condescension

I would manage by some trick

To switch the talk to eels

Or lore of the horse and cart

Or the Provisionals.

But my tentative art

His turned back watches too:

He was blown to bits

Out drinking in a curfew

Others obeyed three nights

After they shot dead

The thirteen men in Derry.

PARAS THIRTEEN the walls said

BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday

Everyone held

His breath and trembled.

It was a day of cold

Raw silence wind-blown

Surplice and soutane:

Rained-on flower-laden

Coffin after coffin

Seemed to float from the door

Of the packed cathedral

Like blossoms on slow water.

The common funeral

Unrolled its swaddling band

Lapping tightening

Till we were braced and bound

Like brothers in a ring.

But he would not be held

At home by his own crowd

Whatever threats were phoned

Whatever flags waved.

I see him as he turned

In that bombed offending place

Remorse fused with terror

In his still knowable face

His cornered outfaced stare

Blinding in the flash.