Something to do with precipices
and ice cream
and then nothing at all to do with them
- I'm tracing whatever
- yeah whatever
and want to be rocky ropy
yes claggy even ragged
like the smell of damp newspaper
a smell that's worse than dull
- maybe it's an icecream parlour - Fusco's -
on the Ormeau Road
a gunman with an unused weapon
letting himself softly
out the back door?
- I met a son of that family
last winter in Moscow
but here and now
there's no thick innocent snow
to soften things
- their angles
their hard lines
as we watch David Trimble dangle
on a thread
- thread or a wire
a command wire that ends
in a hazel grove
that overlooks an A road
some council houses
a red phone box
in South Armagh
- this is what I'm thinking
as we all make this next trip
to the brink
it's in me as I take the road
past the ice rink
to a house on the river
but the river I see
is a greasy groove
that might just be the Lagan
slipping or sliding
down to the sea
- would one jammed Armalite
a rusty revolver
and a sweaty wad
of Semtex do the trick?
it's not likely
as the fabled pikes and a thousand bits
of new and ancient hardware
stay rammed in the thatch
for the next time
or the time after that
- no way will it hatch
either the oval
or the squared egg of peace
because the Union
- what's left of it
the Union was always a dead end
a painted wee corner
whose two high walls
echo back No Surrender
as a pleading boxed-in command
Surrender