He was born too late for ’21,
by ’68 he burnt with the charge:

Delivered 1950 in Bogside,
(part-named after Pope Pius XII),

the second of seven of Derry,
by fifteen years old a butcher.

Then to other blood at eighteen,
(after Fitt was struck in ’68),

and just one year later he was
Derry’s second-in-command:

A man at twenty-one counting
the dead after a bloody seventh day.

Politics’ cloak worn in the early 70’s,
but Mountbatten died on Shadow V:

Your man was the IRA’s number one,
that day when eighteen sons died.

By ’93 he was welcomed in London,
seeking peace within Number 10.

He lived 3,500 weeks, two sides,
and over that time 3,500 died.

---

 

Inis Meadhóin   or
three middle Aran Islands
in Galway Bay
province of Connacht
subject to century-set glacial erratics

Inishmaan the smallest
of those Aran Islands
by qualification of population
said to be thick with
traditional Irish culture
and tripped   grike-deep fixed

ever-floating   predominantly Irish-speaking
and still a secure knowledge of English
but still Gaeltacht
a vernacular   before anything else
including Aran sweater-clichés
purled in the real world.