An Doire

An Doire

The streeling wind
blows in from the west
with the smell of the smokestacks
and ingrained poverty:
the tears, unwelcome,
sting in my staring,
unblinking eyes.

O God, the memories ....

These streets, unchanged,
these rain-streaked and heartless
bricks and stones: a geography
of sorrow. From here, Number 21,
Auntie Molly kissed Uncle Pat good bye
and never saw him again;
drowned in the freezing seas
on the Murmansk run
back in the cold dark war
that was being fought
for freedom
for democracy
for the rights of the downtrodden;
a war, I am told, we won,
and which never changed
local conditions
one little
bit.

O there was laughter there
in the soft Derry air
(we laugh at our own funerals)
and me Daddy
met me Mammy
which was a good thing all round,
considering
somebody else
would be having to write
this otherwise.

Growing up
was music and girls,
girls and music,
with school and the parents
interfering. Until
we saw Martin Luther King
on our black and white TVs
and thought,
if he can, why can't we?

That's how it started.

Thirty-five years later
you wonder
was it worth it?
All the dead pals, the funerals,
all the bad things
we did ourselves.
I don't know.

When I look at Iraq
I can't help
but remember our own little war
(bad enough at the time):
it's when you start to rationalize
murder, so-called military action,
there is, for want of better words,
an abstention of guilt: people
call it patriotism, the national will,
but this is mental novocaine,
and nothing but lies and evasion.
This much I can tell you,
the memories will always come back,
O God, do they ever come back!
They will never lie easy.

What I don't understand
is why they blow up their own people;
we never did that
(well, we did, accidentally).
What the logic requires,
relentlessly, cold-bloodedly,
is to hit the foreign soldiers,
hit the soldiers. Kill them.
(but you start to sympathize
with the bastards: they are,
after all, the same age as you).
Then, more wisely,
you focus on economic targets,
you blow up the City of London, the pipelines,
and after a few hard hits in the pocket,
the "suits", the enemy civilians,
initiate reluctant "talks".

You win if you can just hold out.
You win if you refuse to lose.
It is the "Terrorists"
who give birth to free nations,
just like the Minutemen
of Lexington and Concord.