Ireland

LAUGHING We circled round the poor inadequate As in a game of blind man's buff, except He did not want to play: anger and hate Convulsed his scrawny face; he jigged and le'pt. You! Dick, Dandy Dick, durty Dandy Dick! Yure durty Dandy, durty Dick — ya! ya! Yure durty, durty Dandy Dick! Here's my Da! Dick! Dick! c'mere Dick an' I'll give you a kick! Merciless kids, running rings round a victim, Who flailed and charged, spluttering threats; until Two child-protecting dust-car men, for the thrill, Laid hold of Dick and kicked and pummelled him. The poor frail harmless fool, squealing, ran off: We...

TRIUMPH Tomorrow he'd be off again to Blighty; The lonesomeness is on him now: the blush Of freedom drained, ahead, the train's slow rush To the boat, and to the gas works over the sea. He'd walked the town, and talked and talked, been free With drink, and talked and talked, dressed up in blue- Suit English affluence; he'd quarreled too. With Del'a, maybe, certainly with Minnie. And now, beside the low-barred fire he lingers, Crooning: his cracking, tuneless voice is hoarse With feeling; urging me: "Sing!" Distressed, morose: Surprised, slow tears come down behind my fingers. In triumph...

TOO LONG A SACRIFICE My mother hated "rocks" and classical music. "Rocks", she called big words: had she a name For music? That I cannot now reclaim; But I picture her angry grimace-quick Moves to kill an offending radio, As close to spitting as an angry cat Made edgy, challenged in her lair by "Dat Aul nize!", as if pursued by an ancient foe: She, who loved the Irish music; told To us her own-made tales of magic geese, Faries, giants, ghosts, and fantasies Of Devils called to dance who kicked up gold: A lev'lling Bakun-manque** mind, my mother's : Too long a skivvy for shoneening* Others....

OLD WOUNDS The night the war erupted round Derry's wall I got stuck with an iron spike. My leg ran red. But I did not bleed in Derry. I tried to crawl Drunk, over railings from an adulterous bed. In twenty years wounds heal when they don't kill; My own soon healed little wound troubles me still. 1989

SCHOOLBOOKS We bought schoolbooks in Ennis classrooms then: Penny by penny the poorest paid. My mother Would skimp on call; others found it too much bother, And some could scarce afford to feed the children. One day my Reader disappeared, and when The teacher searched the desks was found, covered In flowery wallpaper. The small thief hovered, Shamed; blushing and trembling, he was beaten. And me, I sat and saw him cringe and beg, A nervous clever granny's boy, an orphan Of eight or nine, Anthony Cullinan, Who boasted to me once he'd eaten an egg. Property has rites, and childrens' rights are...

ROADS TO ENLIGHTENMENT The Virgin Mary came to Ennis When I was a little boy, And yet, religious as you will see, I wasn't fooled — and why? I could not believe she really came, I could not, would not, agree, That she'd come to see some other child And pay no heed to me: I knew with jealous certainty That this absurdity could not be!

REQUIEM FOR DAVID O'CONNELL "Ireland without her people means nothing to me" —James Connolly "They think they have pacified Ireland… They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland un-free shall never be at peace" — Patrick Pearse Six hundred years of strife behind, Of conflict, slaughter, sept and sect; And Tone said, we needs must grow blind To creed and race, for self-respect. But History spawns on rancid need Malign sly...

AN ISLAND FOR CITIZEN PROCUSTES It happens often: "You? (They mean to cut) "No Irishman!" My politics don't fit: The island is the nation: not "them", "it." Folk? No — plain, lake, and rock! But you must not Arraign these dancers of the communal strut, Or wash old blood out of your eyes, or audit The soundings from the suppurating pit, Or look to Tone — dry bones, stomped underfoot. "West Brit: not your identity or birth Or inbred love of the Gael tells who you are Or names your place: strait politics en-girth In-gather: we define, and we debar!" The real is cut to fit a false design, Grown...

Éireannach!* (After reading Lecky's History of Ireland) What is it then, the Irishness Fate laid on me in this largess? A world I lost I scarcely knew, The childhood land I never outgrew, My father's life, my mother's tales Of hungers, wars, workhouses, jails: The memories not quite my own, To which my memories are sewn. Entangled, thus, in Erin's net, I am what I refuse to forget. *Irishman (Socialist Organiser, January, 1992)

On October 25th, 1971, Peter Graham died in Dublin at the hands of semi-gangster members of the "Republican" urban-guerrilla organisation, "Saor Eire", of which he was a member. (Its nearest equivalent today would be the INLA and IPLO). He had been beaten with a hammer, subjected to other indignities, and then shot in the neck and left to choke on his own blood. He was 25 years old. An electrician from the Coombe district of Dublin, Peter had joined the Stalinist "Connolly Youth Movement" at 20 and become a Trotskyist a year later. I knew Peter Graham well, and cared about him. He was marked...