ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)

Featuring the works of Peter O'Neill, Chris Murray, Patrick Joseph Dorrian, Jax Leck And more. Hard copies can be purchased from our website .

Issue No 15 December 2013

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A New Ulster Editor: Amos Greig

On the Wall Editor: Arizahn

Website Editor: Adam Rudden

Contents

Cover Image “Dusk” by Amos Greig

Editorial page 6

Peter O’Neill;

XX. The mask page 8-9

XXI. Hymn to Beauty page 10

XXII. The Perfume page 11

XXIII. Hair pages 12-13

XXIV. Slave page 14

Chris Murray;

Guildeluec and Medea pages 16

Joseph Patrick Dorrian;

Pipes of Peace (In the John Hewitt) page 18

Friday page 19

Elephants pages 20-21

Time (as a river of pictures) page 22

Jax Leck;

What did I learn from my mother page 24-25

And so I ask myself page 22

Maire Maxwell;

Best Helper pages 30-31

Maire Morrissey-Cummins

Sand Patterns page 33

Winter Wishes pages 34-35

Fresh Paint page 36

John Jack Byrne;

Argument page 38

Belfast Return page 39

Christmas page 40

Peter McKenna:

Dimed and Limed on Lappinduff pages 42-49

On The Wall

Message from the Alleycats page 52

John (Jack) Byrne;

John’s work can be found pages 54-56

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Round the Back

John Hewitt tribute page 60-61 Manuscripts, art work and letters to be sent to:

Submissions Editor

A New Ulster

24 Tyndale Green, Belfast BT14 8HH

Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com

See page 51 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is

available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ

Digital distribution is via links on our website:

https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/

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Published in Baskerville

Produced in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

All rights reserved

The artists have reserved their right under Section 7

Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

To be identified as the authors of their work.

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Editorial

‎Sorry about the delay with this issue sadly we have had a few issues a mix of physical

injury and technical difficulties. Our December issue is a few days late but the content more

than makes up for that. This is an issue of translations, short fiction and festive spirit.

For me art should evoke an emotional response be it a book, a poem, painting or

music. I want to experience the emotional state that the artist sought to bring to the surface.

Sometimes you just want to escape from the mundane, the traditional and mainstream.

I was saddened at the recent passing of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela while I never met

him I did study his work in part because I was involved in projects in Johannesburg, Burundi

and Durban. I worked with street artists, musicians and reporters during Apartheid and

watched with interest the transition from White ethnic minority rule into the Rainbow nation.

There is much still to do in South Africa they are a passionate people that produce

some amazing art, music and performance poetry. I hope you get as much enjoyment reading

the following pieces they speak highly of the artists who submitted to this issue, the translator’s

art as well as the soul of the artist.

Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity!

Amos Greig

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Biographical Note: Peter O’Neill

Peter O’ Neill (1967) was born in Cork where he

grew up before moving to live in France in the

nineties. He returned to Dublin in 1998, where he

has been living ever since. He has been writing

poetry sine the eighties, and has been published in

reviews in Ireland, USA, UK and France. His

debut collection Antiope (Stonesthrow Poetry, 2013)

was critically acclaimed: ‘certainly a voice to be

reckoned with.’ Dr Brigitte Le JueZ (Dublin City

University). With over six collections behind him,

he is currently translating Les Fleurs Du Mal.

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Five Translations from Les Fleurs Du Mal, by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) Peter

O’ Neill

XX. The Mask

An allegorical statue in the Renaissance style

For Ernest Christophe, Sculptor

Contemplating this treasure of Florentine grace;

In the undulations of her muscular body,

With the divine sisters elegance and force in abundance.

A miraculous beauty, this woman,

Divinely robust, yet adorably slim,

And who is paid to crown the sumptuous beds,

And charm the leisure time of a high powered banker, or even some Prince!

-But also, note that smile, so fine and voluptuous,

That is where conceit flourishes in ecstasy;

In that long sly, languorous look which secretly mocks;

Behind that cute pout, framed in gauze,

And, where every single movement whispers conspiratorially:

“ Voluptuousness calls, and ‘Love’ crowns me!”

To this gifted ‘Be-ing’, blessed with such majesty,

See what further acts of kindness are bestowed!

Come, close up and see for yourself.

Oh blasphemous art! Oh, deadly surprise!

The woman who promises so much, and with such a divine body,

In the end turns into a two-headed monster!

- Ah no! It is but a mask she wears, there is something else beneath...

Her face now is lit up by an exquisite grimace,

And look now, tightening into an atrocious fist,

The real head, and the sincere face

Out of the shadows of the one which lied.

Poor great beauty! In the magnificent river

Of whose tears flow into my worried heart;

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Your lies stone, and my soul drowns,

In the tragic waters which swell up in your eyes.

But why does she cry? She, a perfect beauty

Who can walk over the whole human race,

What mysterious evil gnaws away at her athletic flanks?

- She cries, because she is incensed by the fact that she has lived!

And because she lives! But what she hates even more

Is the fact, and this is what really brings her to her knees,

Is the fact that tomorrow, alas, she will have to live again!

And the day after, and the day after that again, and always!

Just like any of us.

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XXI. Hymn to Beauty

O Beauty, did you come from the sky profound,

Or from the abyss? Your look, both infernal and divine,

Verse confusion, benevolence with crime,

So that we can compare your effect on men to that of wine.

Within your eye is contained both dusk and dawn,

Your perfume is atomised in the night storm;

Your kisses are a filter, your mouth a carafe

Which makes men weak, and children courageous.

Did you descend from some black hole, or from some comet?

Destiny, charmed by you, follows like a dog;

You sow, by chance, both joy and catastrophe,

And you govern everything, answering to none.

You walk over the dead, Beauty, whom you mock;

Among your many jewels Horror is not the least charming,

And Death among your most valuable heirlooms,

Which I have seen you cavorting with upon your belly.

Ephemeral marvels gravitate towards you: candelabra,

Crackle, flame and say: “Bless this flame!”

Panting the lover leans towards his beloved,

A mere mortal caressing his tomb.

From heaven or hell where do you come from,

O Beauty? Enormous monstrosity, hideous ingénue!

Can your eye, your smile, your foot open a door

To the infinite that I have yet to know?

Angel or demon? who cares which one you are

As long as you – elf with the velour eyes –

Rhythm, perfume, glimmer, my soul queen;

Show me a universe less hideous and heavy as this.

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XXII. The Perfume

When, with both eyes closed, on a warm Autumn night,

I inhale the scent coming from your two warm breasts,

I see before me a land of fantasy playing out behind my eyes,

Which further clarifies the fires emitting from the monotonous sun.

There a bounteous island dwells and where nature affords

Singular trees with delicious fruit, and where can also be seen

Walking among them the bodies of slim, yet vigorous, men,

And women whose frankness simply shocks.

Guided by your scent to such a charming climate,

I see also a port filled with sails from boats

Still recovering from the sea’s waves.

As long as the scent of your perfume

Keeps circling the air, entering my nostrils,

Mixing with my soul, I’ll still hear also the low chant of the sailors.

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XXIII. Hair

You introduced me to the musical; tresses, locks

And curls! O sweetened perfume charged with nonchalance.

Ecstasy! To somehow people my mind, in some obscure place,

With memories, deep within, and evoked by some fetish;

This lock of hair of yours, which triggers them like a talisman.

Languorous Asia and burning Africa,

Whole continents forgotten are exhumed,

By breathing in the depths of this bit of your aromatic forest –

Just as others may recall an obsessive love on hearing

Some old tune, so you, to me, are deeply evoked in this heady perfume.

So, I can return again to that place where trees, full of sap,

And men, live easily with one another.

This stolen tress is the oil which lubricates the dream,

Evokes the sea of ebony into which I once plunged,

Filled with sail, oarsmen, and chants in a maelstrom.

You then were a hidden cove for my soul to drink from,

And in great gulps; a perfume of sounds and colour.

All the vessels gliding upon a golden spray,

Opening their great sails to embrace the winds,

The inferno that is the air blown by a sirocco.

Drunk with my love for you I would plunge my head

Deep into your black ocean, where your Other self lay hidden,

And my subtle spirit, which your waves caressed,

Would find you there in a longing slumber.

There, infinity embraced us within its hold.

Raven’s hair, pavilion of funerary games,

You sent me into the aZure of space and rounds,

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On your quilted flanks, ensnared in your tresses,

Willingly drunk on you and all of your enchantments;

All are being evoked now in the scent of coconut oil and musk, mixing with the

smells coming from the street.

For what seems an eternity, you have been emblazoned upon my mind,

Smouldering there like a ruby, pearls and sapphires,

And to appease finally my desire you have never abandoned me,

Are you not then my oasis, or some profound well,

From which I sip from the wines of these intoxicating memories?

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XXIV. Slave

Vessel of sorrow, great taciturn one,

I adore you in equal measure as the gaping night.

And I love you more Beauty as you disappear

And reappear to me ironically accumulating,

Night treasure, in enough places

To distance my arms from the blue immensity.

I advance to attack, clinging to these assaults

Like a choir of worms lunching upon a corpse,

And I cherish, o implacable and cruel beast,

The coldness which you cultivate and

Which only makes me appear to love you even more.

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Biographical Note: Chris Murray

Chris Murray is a City and Guilds Stone-cutter. Her poetry is

published in Ropes Magazine, Crannóg Magazine, The Burning

Bush Online Revival Meeting (Issue 1), Carty’s Poetry Journal,

Caper Literary Journal , CanCan The Southword Journal (MLC)

and the Diversity Blog (PIWWC; PEN International Women

Writer’s Committee). Her poem for three voices, Lament, was

performed at the Béal festival in 2012. She has reviewed poetry

for Post (Mater dei Institute),Poetry Ireland and Writing.ie. Chris

writes a poetry blog called Poethead which is dedicated to the

writing, editing and translation of women writers. She is a

member of the International PEN Women Writer’s Committee,

and the Social Media coordinator and Web-developer for Irish

PEN

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Guildeluec and Medea.

(Chris Murray)

Guildeluec concedes what defeats

Warm welcomes with spirit love

The mistress of Eliduc, Guiladun.

Medea, flamethrower, mother of two

Depleted by the phantasmagoria of the wedding queue

Impregnates the crown, the robe with her poison smoke.

Her sceptre, a wand. She is flame, frozen-

Guildeluec, smooth, concedes what defeats

God-wed, she knows love to be green;

'Winter is brown, desire in potentiate'

what stirs?

(She a heavenly kingdom has bought!)

Medea, yellow crocus, evergreen.

Is new-gilded each spring. Her name is not forgot.

-Like Guildeluec's.

Note: Guildeluec bought a convent when her husband had an affair

becoming a secular abbess. Medea is the name we remember negatively.

The story of Eliduc and the two women is from 'The Ebony Tower', by

John Fowles.

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Biographical Note: Joseph Patrick Dorrian

Patrick Dorrian is Belfast born bred and buttered as

McDowell would say. He retired from teaching in 2007 after

30 years struggling in west Belfast. Patrick is married to

Frances and they have 3 offspring all adults now. He has

dabbled with poetry for several decades as a means of escape

and last year Patrick had a poem about Palestine published in

a magazine in Europe, his first publication.

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Pipes of Peace (In the John Hewitt)

(Patrick J. Dorrian)

The twee of them framed,

two from the lately deceased;

poetically thought to demonstrate

some inherent desire for peace,

which must have descended

with age, on heavy shoulders.

Late to politics, after the gun,

discussion post explosion.

Well who would have thought it?

killers can be reasonable too.

The three of them framed

under "Pipes of peace".

Funny, no smoke, no cordite smell,

just sulphur.

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Friday

(Joseph Patrick Dorrian)

I'm in the Black Box again,

Helena's here working,

in her own way, a piece

of installation art but mobile.

Tomas too, all silver haired,

he should be Argentinian.

On the screen Buster Keating,

wrestling steamboats, girls

and hurricanes while the blues

are played subtley in background.

It's Friday night. I'm in the black books,

again, chagrine shines like a lantern

on the disappointed faces,

red with anger and not alcohol.

But I'm in the Black Box again,

I'm relaxed even when the fire alarm

responds to burnt pizza and Elena blushes.

I'm in the Black Box.

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Elephants

(Joseph Patrick Dorrian)

Belfast Zoo, it perches on the slopes

of Ben Madigan, above the city but within.

Within, the exotica of the animal world,

housed for edutainment, a zooarama.

Yet within this internment, humanity.

When Belfast was a war target;

the ships and planes built there,

( some miles from the zoo),

attracted the bombers from Germany;

some hit these targets, many missed

but always the bangs upset the animals.

Destroying the animals seemed more humane,

and soit was to be.

But the lady keeper of the elephant

told her she'd be safe with her

and nightly took it home,

away from the zoo, across to suburbia

and into her garden, a refugee of war.

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There is a play on tour now,

celebrating this ladies humanity,

a fitting tribute, no doubt. A film of the story?

geez that'd be good get the message out,

Belfast folk can be compassionate too.

Lo, there is a film being made!

In Germany!

The story's transposed to Hamburg and it's Zoo.

Do Germans do Irony?

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Time (as a river of pictures)

(Joseph Patrick Dorrian)

Time (as a river of pictures)

Each frame of vision passes,

Some colour, mixed with monochrome,

soon sorted by one's cones and rods

into memory blocks.

Stored in neurons 'til

chemical release

signals a want or need.

Sometimes, out of sync, the light,

wiggles and waves in passage,

is this a particle package

acting like a wave, to beat

incessantly on the diffraction grate of memory?

Do blind spots count against the whole picture?

Or intelligence find the closure

between the gaps?

Do still lifes move

in the moment I blink?

Does all life cease when I die?

And if time is a river of pictures,

does perspective colour one's view?

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Biographical Note: Jax Leck

Jax Leck is relatively new to poetry but is not new

to writing, Jax has had one science fantasy book

published and another on the way.

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WHAT DID I LEARN FROM MY MOTHER

(Jax Leck)

She is an enigma, my mother,

flapping and fussing over

biscuit crumbs and dog hairs,

lamenting the loss of the golden days

of her youth, which

were anything but golden,

but she will never admit this

even to herself, so she invents

tales of a happy childhood

where her alcoholic father

never crashed in the TT,

losing a finger

and his sweetness

but instead told her stories

and fed her mind

with wonders, as he held her close.

She is an enigma, my mother,

as my father slid to the floor

on hearing his daughter was dead

she took charge and comforted

father and husband

taking him home

making him tea

with extra sugar

for the shock; she called me

to give the news my sibling

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was gone, it was April the first,

I asked if she was joking, calmly

she spoke, assuring me,

asking me to come home.

She is an enigma, my mother

knowing the meaning

of love and duty

she has spent a lifetime

pursuing one, practicing the other

caring for aging mothers, dying fathers

and a husband struck down in his prime,

washing and feeding,

a constant companion

never leaving his side;

twenty years

unwavering devotion

until love was gone, duty done,

and she was lost.

From my mother I have learned

that love can kill.

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And So I ask myself.

(Jax Leck)

If I could go back in time

change anything

what would it be?

The possibilities seem endless

don't they?

My sister was killed

at 2330 hour on 31 March 1990

by a guy on a mobile phone

whose attention was distracted

from driving

for just two seconds.

I could be there 10 seconds earlier

grab her from the front of his car

or lift the cat from the road

so she wouldn’t have to stop.

I could call Heathrow

get them to ground Pan Am flight 103

on the 21st December 1988

by making a bomb threat

save the 270 souls on board,

the people in Sherwood Crescent

my colleagues who committed suicide

after working at Lockerbie.

I could go round

to see the lady in Radnor Street

who called

to say her husband

was being violent again

that she was frightened

instead of giving her legal advice

leaving a note for the next shift

‘ respond quickly

to a call from this house.’

They are all great possibilities aren't they?

Which would you choose,

save your sister,

save 270 odd strangers

or save one desperate mother?

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Or go back to the weekend of 12th February 2010.

A really crappy week at work.

my department of three now one

same workload, same pay

tired and emotionally unstable

I came home that Friday lunchtime

found an old man waiting in my living room.

He was wearing a beige jacket and a tweed bunnet.

His hands huge and wrinkled,

resting on a well-worn wooden stick.

Dressed and ready for hours

before I got home.

He waited patiently for me

to take him

on his Friday afternoon drive

around Glasgow, the city he loved.

The city where he drove his taxi

before the stroke.

To Barrowlands

to see Big Franks Telly shop

To Hampden

to see where he had played in the BB band.

To the streets in Maryhill

where he had been the big man.

To the Asda rank

to see his old taxi buddies.

He sat there looking at me

with those big sad eyes and

I took him with me, grudgingly

to Tesco in Springburn

leaving him to limp inside

to get his newspaper

while I tore around the store.

I came outside

to find the car ignition

turned over but unstarted

the very thing that kills engines.

I swore and shouted at him.

I called him a stupid old fool

for damaging my car

which I could ill afford.

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He sat quiet

his head down.

I knew as soon as I said them -

the words-

that they were wrong, so wrong, so bad

but I could not take them back.

I stayed enraged and he stayed penitent.

The next day I took him to Silverburn

my penance, his prize

I was still bitter

he was still stinging.

It was Saturday the 13th of February

I wheeled him round the centre where

he tried to buy me a single red rose

I told him to keep his money.

He became withdrawn, quiet,

this big man, the life and soul of any party.

On the Sunday,

St Valentine’s Day,

he told me he wanted to go

that he was done

I took him to the hospital

sat in casualty

until they found him a bed

and left.

On Monday the 14th

at 0730

the hospital phoned to say ‘come quick’.

I sat and held his hand

watching his wordless face

breathing hard, a goldfish out of water

until he died at 1600 hours.

If I could go back in time

I would change that weekend,

I would have been kind,

I would have been the daughter he deserved.

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Biographical Note: Marie Maxwell

Mari Maxwell's work has appeared online and in print publications in the

USA and Ireland. Among them: FlashFlood:Flooding for National Flash-

Fiction Day 2013, Poetry 24, A New Ulster, The Galway Review, Beyond

the Diaper Bag, Haiku J, Crannog, Revival, Boyne Berries, and Barbie

Bazaar and Coping magazines. One of her stories was longlisted in the

2013 Over The Edge New Writer of Year Award. Another placed second

in the 2008 Dromineer Literary Festival.

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Best Helper

(Maire Maxwell)

It’s Christmas time and Mammy’s at it again.

There is whiskey on the air and a flurry of activity in our Dublin kitchen.

Mammy picks up the bottles on the weekly shop. For several weeks they stand in

rows, like soldiers, the labels sleek across the glass bottles. Their stand to attention is

brief as they’re poured and measured. Emptied and replaced.

The earthy smell tingles and wafts through the kitchen. Mammy staggers from

counter to sink to oven and back again. Even sleep does little to hide the black

shadows beneath her eyes.

Mammy doesn’t drink. She’s a sworn teetotaler. These days though she’s hitting

the bottle hard.

It’s the cakes that drink it up. Copious cupfuls of warm amber preserving fruit

and nuts.

Love, Mammy calls it, and pours it out liberally for her children living abroad. A

mother celebrating Christmas in the United States, New Zealand and Boston’s frigid

suburbs.

On our kitchen counter the bowls of shelled and skinned almonds await their

moment. The glace cherries have been washed and dried. The raisins, currants and

sultanas weighed. The flour sifted into white cascading mountains. Dozens of eggs

waiting to be cracked.

Mammy says I’m a big help. Her best helper, in fact. I’m the youngest. The

others have all gone. To Boston, Australia, London, anywhere the work is Mammy

says. She expects the world will have changed by the time I’m ready to leave. Maybe,

she whispers, I won’t.

It’s our first holiday ever without the older lot.

I’m not sure if it’s the oven that makes her face so red, or if being a teetotaler

means she’s allergic to the whiskey. Still she’s awful quiet as she loads the oven up.

The wrapping is the hardest part. First though is the rolling and blanketing of

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almond and royal icing. Mammy likes to tuck and coax the sweet ground almonds

around the top and into the crevices.

Your brother likes his almond icing thick, she reminds me. We laugh because

he’s the very one ate half off our granny’s cake one Christmas! Mammy was mad but

she and Granny laughed about it later over a pot of tea.

Mammy’s hands are gentle. Caressing.

I wonder what the airport people think as they load up the airplane’s belly. What

does the US Postman think when he lugs the crinkled biscuit tins from our house to

theirs with the smells of whiskey soaking through the layers of brown wrapping, and

the waxed orange twine.

A piece of home my loves, Mammy says as the box is slid across the counter.

Weighed and stamped.

Mammy, my brother tells her from the USA, I could just see you in the kitchen

sifting the memories.

My Mammy smiles. Soon, she says, I’ll be able to bake by myself.

Sure I can’t go so. I’m Mammy’s big helper.

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Biographical Note: Máire Morrissey-Cummins

Máire is Irish, married with two adult children. She lived

abroad for many years, working in Holland mainly and

Máire lives between Wicklow, Ireland and Trier, Germany

at present. She loves nature and is a published haiku writer.

Máire retired early from the Financial Sector and

found art and poetry. She is really enjoying the experience

of getting lost in words and paint.

33

Sand Patterns

(Máire Morrissey-Cummins)

Daybreak on the island,

I walk the tide-line,

surf gently caresses my feet.

I trace the imprints of another,

feet far bigger than mine.

I smile to myself,

thinking we are all the same,

yet our templates are quite different.

I look to the mountains,

carved lines like an accordion

the pattern of storms past

shaped by the shift of time.

My body sways with the pull of the tide,

waves furrow on sand,

claim my footprints

with each new breaker,

the beach wiped clean.

55 years of wrinkles

stretch as I stroll,

a map for all to see,

and as I wade through sun warmed waters,

swim with fish in oceans deep

I am at ageless,

floating high,

sparkling under a vast blue sky.

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Winter Wishes

(Máire Morrissey-Cummins)

I wish

I was the chubby grey cat

curled up, dozing

in warm sunshine,

hiding behind the flowerpots,

observing a garden symphony unfold.

I wish

I was the scarlet rose hips

high above the trellis,

eying the changing colours of the day,

lulled by sweet whispers from trees,

eaves dropping on scented rosebuds

gossiping with hot pink hibiscus

on the hidden underworld of leaves.

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I wish

I was a striped bumble bee

buzzing from lilac to lavender,

or a fat spider

weaving silken threads

spinning trapped lives to death.

How nice it is to daydream,

as I gaze through the window

at a barren winter garden,

with the promise of spring,

the hope of summer,

of light and warmth

on a slate winter’s day.

36

Fresh Paint

(Máire Morrissey-Cummins)

Eventide,

nestled within freshly painted walls,

I trek through mossy green fields

bordered with tender yew.

Shadows above the wardrobe

take me to scented pine forests

high, amid snow-peaked mountains

on a dense winter’s day.

Candlelight flickers

on the new white cabinet,

a flame sunrise

crosses oceans deep.

My breath rises and falls

like a sprinkle of mist,

touching the silent spaces

between falling leaves.

Opening my book,

I crease into soft white pillows

legs long, crossed at the ankles,

painted toes twitch for warmth,

the nip of November, biting.

I snuggle down warm

rejoining the search for a missing child,

The story of Lucy Gaunt.

37

Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne

John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for

almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and

has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies,

Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://john-

isleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

.

38

Argument

(John Jack Byrne)

I walk along the crest of the mountains

heather brushing my boots with a

swishing sound, a skylark above me

sings feverishly perhaps in an effort to

gain my attention, what sights I see

before me, even this agitated bird cannot

succeed in distracting me.

Far below ,the lowlands stretch to the sea

shades of greens and gold bordered by

hedgerows of wild woodbine ,dog rose ash

and bramble, laden down with the blackberry,

the blues deep purples and yellows

of the mountain slopes, the buzz of the bumblebee

as he darts from heather to heather.

It is summer’s end and the trees are beginning to lose

their lush green and are slightly tinted by Autumn

approaching, as bit by bit she chills the evening air.

The lark sings louder now, as if determined to

inform me of one with whom I share my life, and one

who compares easily with my surroundings

I make my way home without giving him an argument

39

Belfast Return

(John Jack Byrne)

Samson and Goliath ,you’re still here

proud on the banks of the Lagan

you witnessed it all, standing tall

and knew that our poor hearts were sagging

Out to the west of you touching the sky

are the mountains of Divis and Black

they know of the peoples struggles

and have seen every soldier attack

For thirty long years a tormented city

of anarchy murder and bomb

frightened souls fleeing their homes

cursing the hate they were fleeing from

Armoured cars , and security checks

and murals of heroes all

Samson and Goliath, you’re still here

and you’re still standing tall

But peace has come, a fragile peace

God knows it was a long time coming

now you witness joy and smiles on the faces

with no more helicopters humming

40

Christmas

(John Jack Byrne)

Now the tree is all aglow,

again it’s Christmas time

cheers and laughter fill the air

aloud the church bells chime

Carol singers at the door

with festive songs to sing

of the holly and the ivy

and the time of Christ the King

Children wait so patiently

and listen for the sounds

of bells that jingle in the night

when Santa does his rounds

There upon a roof of stars

his Reindeer stride across

the great man cries Ho! ho! ho!

make way for Santa Claus

41

Biographical note: Peter McKenna

Peter McKenna is a writer from Dublin currently

living in the UK. He has been previously

published in A New Ulster.

42

1.

The trouble started over the wind farms. Everyone was saying there was money to be

made. Someone called it a Sicilian business plan. Said that you couldn’t make money

out of it on its own, that it was the grant money that they should be after. Trying to

make a living off thirty acres of Ulster hill would turn a man’s head that way. The only

dissenting voice was Dinny’s. When Reilly sent his auctioneer, Bannon, out to the farm

one evening to have a talk about the land up on Lappinduff it was laid out flat in terms

that others hadn’t refused.

‘What good is the land to you at all? It’s a heap of rock and heather not good for

anything other than keeping a few scraggly fucking ewes.’

It was a warm evening and Bannon was sweating in his suit. Dinny was leaning on the

yard gate with one foot on the bar squinting across the hollow at the hills in the hazy

distance. McCabe was burning gorse and the air smelled sweetly. You could just about

make out the workmen erecting the turbines on Traynor’s hill. Every evening Dinny

would stretch and walk out into the yard to lean on the gate, chew a stalk of grass and

watch them.

‘Now,’ Bannon went on, taking out a handkerchief to mop his brow. ‘There’s an offer

there that any sane man would jump at.’

Dinny hadn’t said a word since he had pulled up in his 98- C Corolla and Spick was

enjoying watching his nerves get at him. He was from the town. He didn’t like the

summer heat baking the hills, the horse flies or the smell of the cow shed and the

burning gorse. He started to get angry in the deferential way of cowards and in short

steps retreated to his car.

‘You’re a fool. I’m here to put money in your pocket and you don’t have the decency

to act civil towards me. Well you can stew on your fucking hill.’

Spick stood on the bank of the hedge as he turned the car in the lane. Bannon pulled

up beside him and rolled down the window.

‘Here, boy. Would ya try and talk some sense to your father, for the love of God.

What use is that land to him? He’s only going to bring trouble down on the pair of yis.’

Spick looked to Dinny still leaning on the gate, his face wrinkled with a rare smile and

then looked at Bannon. He tried to think who was the bigger fool. Everyone for twenty

miles knew he was Dinny’s nephew, that his son was in prison in Dublin and Spick was

mute. When Bannon realised that he wasn’t going to talk he shook his head, unable to

comprehend these hill people in their worn dusty summer clothes meeting him at the

gate and refusing to utter a word. He huffed and drove off.

Dinny was tinkering with the tractor as he did when he needed to think things through

and when Spick ran up to him tripping over the dog they called Paisley he said:

‘Do you think that’s going to see an end to it?’

Spick said nothing.

Dinny studied his face with a troubled look and then, nodding his head to reassure

himself he said.

‘Jimmy’ll be back soon. We’ll see what we’re about when he is.’

The night after Bannon’s visit Dinny took his old 12 bore down from the attic and left

it loaded, standing in a crook in the front room. He kept the yard gate padlocked and at

night Spick could hear him moving about the house. Most mornings he was found

asleep in his armchair by the range. In the evenings they would stand in the yard

43

listening to the drone of tractors carried up from the hollow as the neighbours worked.

It wasn’t until Jimmy came home in August that they set to work themselves. Mending

fences and moving the cattle to fresher pasture. Cutting and spreading and the making

of hay all the time watching the skies warily. If the weather hadn’t held the cattle would

have starved that winter.

2.

There weren’t many that would have called the Donoghue’s angels. They said that it

was in the blood. Wild blood they had and it could be close enough to the truth

considering the way trouble chased their daddies and granddaddies before them into

the ground. Dinny had been wild when he was younger and Jimmy inherited the taint.

Swaggering around with his evil grin. What was said about them was for the most part

true. They were involved. The cowshed was oft as not full of cigarettes or diesel for

washing that had been slipped along some forgotten boreen and across the border.

There was a still in a hiding place under the boards in the shed and there was always the

makings lying around.

You couldn’t say it was one thing or the other, the thing with Reilly. It was the result of

an enigmatic tangle of feuding and grievance that you could trace back over the

generations. What spurned them on was older. It was the landscape as much as it was

anything. The clustered hills and rushy hollows and the lonely farms with their

unforgotten secrets. Things the jackeens and the new men can’t comprehend. If they

did they might have understood why the boys took to the hills to fight it out with Reilly.

3.

Willie Turner was a hue dyed Orangeman but a decent skin. When they stumbled out

of the dark one night, Spick coughing out his guts and draped over Jimmy’s shoulder,

the pair of them covered in soot, he’d taken them in.

‘What in God’s name happened ye?’ he said helping Jimmy lay Spick on the sofa.

‘Reilly, fucking Reilly, that’s what happened us.’

Maybe they’d been watching the house. Perhap that was how they had caught Dinny

on his own. As Jimmy wheeled the car drunkenly into the yard that night the headlights

had illuminated a terrible scene. Flames licking the eaves of the house from its shattered

windows. Dinny lying prostrate on the gravel having been felled with a blow to the head.

The shotgun lay open and unloaded at the side of the house. Spick found Paisley still

alive out back. He lay the dog beside Dinny and started to choke on his mute’s tears.

The dog was done for. They’d shot it. When Jimmy said it was time to go and picked

up the shotgun Spick touched his forehead to Paisley’s and then gripped him by the

neck. His legs kicked out a little before he died.

‘They’re saying it was knackers,’ Willie told them the following evening. ‘Robbery

gone wrong. Tried to torch the place to cover themselves.’

He tried to convince them to go to the guards.

‘I’ll say it once more, gasun. Take it to the guards and leave off.’

Jimmy looked at him sourly and stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth.

‘There’ll be no good coming off this. I’m telling ya. It’ll only get out of hand and as it

is you’ve done nothing wrong. They’ll be inclined to listen.’

44

‘And what good will that do? Reilly doesn’t dirty his hands.’

‘He’ll kill you. You and the young lad here. – If you get in his way over this he’ll kill

you and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘He’ll fucking try, I’ve no doubt.’

Willie saw it was no use. He ate some bread crusts and slurped his tea. Jimmy hadn’t

told him that they had torched one of Reilly’s diggers over on Traynor’s hill that night

and that the guards would be after them for it. He was a decent one though and he

didn’t ask why they hid in the loft during the day. The next morning he cooked them

breakfast before dawn and gave them what he could. Tinned fruit. Tea. Some bread

and sugar. An old, tin pot. Matches. A half empty bottle of whiskey and a tarpalin he

had used to cover dead cattle during the foot and mouth. They cut out over the fields as

the sun rose.

4.

They’d been raised on the hills. They were used to the fine, blinding rains and the

cutting winds. They knew every wet inch.

5.

Of course Dinny had weaned them on rebel songs. Oh aye, alot was made of it later.

Dinny’s collection of westerns. As if a few dozen dime novels could explain it. It was

older, it was deeper but can you blame them for feeling some solidarity, some bond,

between themselves alone in the hills and the Commanche. The Cherokee. The

Cheyenne. The Apache.

6.

Healy cursed the rain which rushed at his windscreen in flurries. Hard weather, he

thought and counted it a miracle that he had kept out of the ditch when he pulled up at

Hannon’s. Sunday evening and the place was deserted. It stood at a crossroads in

Limaheny. Wood panelled, lino floor type of joint. The back arse of nowhere. Hadn’t

had a lick of paint since the seventies. Now it ticked over on the pensions of the old

men who lived alone and scattered about the glen.

‘Pint there, Mick,’ Healy said to Hannon as he settled himself at the bar.

‘Ogious weather that,’ Hannon said.

‘It’s a terror.’

He nursed the stout and scratched his beard and waited for Tummins. The fucker

wouldn’t be on time. He had arranged the meeting but he ran to his own schedule. That

kind of thing stuck in Healy’s craw.

It was half eight and Healy had been waiting a half hour when Tummins walked in.

He nodded to Hannon and patted Healy’s shoulder.

‘Give us a pint there Mick,’ he said and when Hannon brought the pint:

‘Can you give us the room?’

Hannon nodded and shuffled arthritically into the back room to leave them to

business.

‘Brave age that man,’ Tummins said.

45

‘Aye.’

He’d told Healy he was thinking about selling up. ‘Looks like the gasun has made a

life for himself up in Dublin,’ he said sadly. ‘I think I’ll just sell up and be done with it

altogether.’

Healy had stayed alive long enough to know when there was something wrong. When

Tummins started talking some shite about the Ulster title chances that year he said:

‘Get to it, would ya?’

‘Do you think I’m worried?’ Healy said when he’d finished.

‘We’re just putting the word out is all. Those boys are trouble.’

‘Well they’re dead men now,’ Healy said. He sipped his pint and thought it a shame

that Hannon was thinking about closing the place. The pints were always decent.

‘Well we need to get a handle on it. First the oul fella and now this. I told Reilly he

should wait until they surfaced before he made a bid for the land.’

Healy looked at him sharply and thought ‘This one’s tongue’s so loose it’s in danger

of falling out of his head.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He called in Dinny’s debts.’

The drive home was slow going and once or twice the car nearly slid off the road. The

rumours were they were holed up in the hills somewhere. Out in the open. Jaysus. A

good decent country man would never hold with that sort of nonsense. If Reilly didn’t

get them the weather would. ‘If you hear anything let us know,’ Tummins had said.

They would turn up eventually. They’d walk into a bar looking for a drink or Jimmy

would turn up in Cootehill looking for the young Macken one. What was it that he’d

heard? They’d had a child. A girl. Hadn’t been able to hack the town though. No,

hosing down the crates in a chicken factory wasn’t work for Dinny Donoghue’s boy.

This made him chuckle for some reason.

When he got out of his car in the yard he stood in the rain trying to find his keys. The

light above the door flickered in a gust of wind. He stopped and looked at the rain

dancing furiously about the light. Another gust and it flickered again. He watched the

late news and drank a cup of tea before going to bed.

When he woke up it was still dark. He lay awake listening to the creakings of the

house and the rain lashing the roof. Every now and then a great tumbling gust of wind

roared passed and rattled the gutters. The pattering of the rain on the flagstones had

sounded like footsteps tracing a path around the house to him when he was a child.

Healy sat up, unsure of himself. He had never been one to let his imagination run away

with him. He turned on the bedroom light and pulled a night robe on. He checked the

windows and doors. They were locked and there was no sign of anything out of the

ordinary. Before he headed back to bed he opened the front door and peered out into

the rain. The light above the door flickered and he told himself he’d go to the hardware

in the morning and buy a replacement.

He was halfway down the hallway when he heard it. A tile coming loose in the wind?

He turned back to the door and when he opened it he saw that the light had gone out.

He cursed thinking that the damn thing had given up and walked out onto the porch

step to have a look. As he was peering up through the dark at the rain he noticed that

something was crunching under his slippers. It was glass.

7.

46

Imagine it. The word reaching Reilly alone in the house out in Lavey. Wrought iron

gates and a stonework facade with a thin lawn that had to be resodded every spring,

ornamental grasses not taking well to the stoney soil. Some disquiet must have settled in

the hardwood emptiness of the rooms. They’d crossed a line with Healy. That was for

sure. Be jaysus it must have kept him awake a night. And peering out the windows of his

eight bedroom dormer, through the rain cloud and up at the hills he would have felt

vulnerable, would he not?

8.

He was done for and he knew it. He stood, all eighteen stone of him, at the bar in

Bannon’s and necked a measure of brandy, rifled in his pocket and slammed a fistful of

coins on the counter. Sinead gave him an insolent look and lounged toward him.

‘Same again is it, Breffny?’

He resisted the impulse to deal her a slap. She had soft lidded eyes that seemed to

laugh at him. A slap wouldn’t have done much good. She would have wiped the corner

of her mouth and looked up at him through her tousled hair, her hand to her face and

savoured it. Memorising every detail.

When she brought him the brandy she paused for a moment, looked at him and said,

haughtily:

‘You haven’t asked after my daddy.’

When he said nothing, she bit her bottom lip, scraped the coins off the counter and

took out her displeasure on the till.

The oul boy, Smith, was in for his lunch and Tummins heard him talking to one of

the Matthews at a table in the corner.

‘Ya’d think it was the wild wesht.’

The word was out.

‘You were lucky,’ the doctor had said. There was luck and there was luck. The shot

had glanced his side. The flak jacket had been too small. He nodded at the doctor and

when the nurse finished bandaging his hand he had left the hospital and driven back to

Cootehill. They’d be expecting him at the barracks. Mulharty was probably in his office

expecting a sleek new D reg to appear, full of grim mouths demanding an explanation.

The boys that they’d sent up from Dublin the week before were unimpressed by the

way things were being handled at the barracks: ‘In last few months, there’s been, what,

seventeen incidents of violent disorder in this region and from what we’ve been led to

believe they’re all inter related.’

He was one of those, preened, university educated guards with black rimmed glasses,

a gym membership and an expensive suit. He leaned over Mulharty’s desk and picked

through the papers that lay on it in a state of disarray. The type they’d call a bit of a

queer down Bannon’s.

‘Obviously the concern is that it’s linked to resurgent dissident factions.’

The inspector sat leaning forward, cross legged and red faced. He was intimidated by

the two black suited bureau men that Dublin had sent.

‘There is some link to a gang of former republicans, that’s true, but the nature of these

incidents isn’t political,’ he said. Tummins could see sweat beading on his scalp through

his thin white hair.

47

‘Whatever it is, get a handle on it man. Make some arrests. There’s potential here for

a major scandal.’

Mulharty laughed, a twittering, flustered laugh and the Dublin guards exchanged a

look.

‘Inspector, this is no cause for amusement. Two men are dead and another’s missing.

A man has been shot in the stomach and robbed under your noses two hundred feet up

the road. What was the name, Hanlon?’

‘Bannon,’ Tummins offered.

‘Thank you sergeant. And this man. The second man who was killed, Sean Healy,

was a known republican. He served time in Portlaoise for armed robbery and firearms

offences. Now there’s what’s really causing our superiors, yours and mine, down in

Dublin to shit themselves. Special Branch were keeping tabs on him up until a few years

ago. What we’re assuming is that the weaponry that’s being used in these robberies

came out of this guy’s cowshed.’

They were on the ball, Tummins had to give them that. He tried to give up as little as

he could but they were professionals. He gave them almost everything. Donoghue’s

murder. The burning of the pub in Tullyvin that Reilly owned. Healy’s death. The

Bannon robbery. The fuckers had relieved him of the nightclub’s weekend takings on

the street in plain daylight and were back two nights later to hit the cattle market. When

Devlin stepped in as they were tearing through the cattle stalls he’d got his head busted

for his trouble. One of them had slapped him in the mouth with the butt of a pistol and

knocked half his teeth clean out of his head. The Rudden lad had turned up bollock

naked on a bog road the far side of Clones. They’d given him a good hiding but he’d

turned up which was more than could be said for McCabe. He’d just vanished. Dimed

and limed in a ditch somewhere up on Lappinduff no doubt. It’d be spring before they

found him.

‘Shots fired at a cattle market robbery. Construction workers threatened by armed

men. For fuck’s sake lads what is going on?’

‘We think it is relating to a feud over the erection of wind turbines in the parish of

Killtianna,’ Mulharty said.

Tummins experienced a new emotion hearing those words come out of the

Inspector’s mouth. It was embarassment and he decided he didn’t like it. Gloss it over

man, for fuck’s sake, he thought. Don’t play the fucking bogtrotter. But no, he hadn’t

imagined it, the look exchanged between the two Dublin lads confirmed to him that it

had been said.

They watched them leave from the window of Mulharty’s office. The Inspector was

fuming.

‘They’ll be back before long,’ he said, watching them getting into their car.

‘They will.’

‘Well, Brefny,’ he said turning on Tummins, ‘get it sorted.’

The word from Reilly was the same. It was to be dealt with before there was any more

interest shown in the runnings of Killtianna.

Tummins didn’t think much of his chances in rooting them out in the hills but as luck

would have it the frosts came hard that November along with the appearance of the

aurora borealis not seen that far south since the Christmas O’Neill marched on Kinsale.

Like all omens, it was a difficult one to read.

48

‘Because they won’t be long in the hills with these frosts,’ he explained to young

Rudden as they drove out to Turner’s farm.

‘You think they’ll be at Willie’s then?’

‘I do not but they will be holed up somewhere hereabouts.’

For a man of his age, Willie held up well. It was all that Scotch blood, Tummins

thought. Some breed the Ulster prods. The boys gave him a few choice slaps but he

didn’t give anything away until they slipped a plastic bag over his head.

‘They’re with Devaney,’ Willie gasped. ‘On yon road the far side of Lappinduff.’

Tummins thought over it for a minute. He thought he recalled some relation between

the Devaneys of Kill and the Donoghues.

‘They’re second cousins,’ Willie wheezed when Tummins put it to him.

The wild west, Tummins thought. He looked at his bandaged hand and then

motioned to Sinead to refill the empty glass on the counter. It had been like something

out of the westerns he watched as a child. Windows breaking. Net curtains fluttering in

gun smoke. He’d been looking for a confrontation so that he could knock them off,

nice and legal like, and by jesus they had given him one.

9.

Willie Turner’s ambition for the best part of twenty years had been to outlive Patrick

McIntee and so when Pat told him that he was dying, it had hit Willie hard.

‘Cancer,’ he’d said, looking at Willie with a sad, serene smile and wet eyes. They were

driving to Cootehill to meet an archivist from one of the museums in Dublin. Pat

coughed and straightened up in the passenger seat and said:

‘I don’t want any sympathy mind. Not from you.’

He laughed and looked out at the passing countryside and added:

‘Jaysus, if one of ye is feeling sorry for you you are one thing and one thing only.

Rightly fucked. – Quare lot that ye are.’

Pat McIntee was the president, treasurer, secetary and – with the death of Arthur

McKenna over the winter – the sole surviving member of the Ancient Order of

Hibernians in Kiltianna.

‘So you’re on top of the world I suppose,’ Pat had said when Willie offered his

condolences. ‘Best odds there’s been round these parts for ye lot in a long time. Two to

one hey? Well, I’ll tell you now, that fucker in Drumkeady isn’t long for this world.’

With Art McKenna dead, the Orange order had gained an unprecendented two to

one advantage over the Hibs in the parish. That was until Billy Orbison passed away at

the age of eighty seven the following February. After that Pat, perhaps sensing victory,

had taken to dropping by the farm once or twice a week and inquiring after Willie’s

health. He seemed so assured of Willie’s pending death and his own good health that

Turner had had a mass card printed up for the repose of the soul of Patrick McIntee,

Tullyco, and stuck it in the frame of the mirror in the front room where it would be

seen.

‘Just so I’m ready for the day,’ Willie told him when he saw it.

McIntee had flown into a rage. He called Willie a tweed eating, dutch loving, land

grabbing, Paisleyite swine. It took three good measures of whiskey to calm him down.

‘How long have they given you?’ Willie asked.

‘Could be six months. Could be a year.’

49

Willie nodded. When he got home he would tear the mass card into little pieces and

burn the scraps.

The archivist from Dublin met them in the White Horse. He was a plump, modish

city culchie with sideburns and a brown cord jacket. He shook their hands and ordered

them a pot of tea. Pat started jabbering on with him in Irish but Willie had shut him up

by complimenting the article which the archivist had writtem on the UVF in Cavan and

Monaghan for History Ireland.

‘I think this is a very important gesture, lads,’ the archivist said when they got down to

business. ‘I think the attitude during the troubles was to just let everything slip away.

You know, if it could be forgotten in parts of the country where there was this divide

then it was best to let it be forgotten.’

Pat scoffed at that.

‘I don’t know if there was much of a divide meself.’

‘How’d you mean?’

‘That lot did their thing and we did ours and there was no badness in it for a long time.

Sure we used to share the big drum.’

‘Sorry? The what?’

‘He means the Lambeg,’ Willie explained.

Pat threw him a sour look and said:

‘Oh the airs and the graces. We called it the big drum and it was as good a name as

any.’

The archivist laughed nervously.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘just from the fact that you’ve refered to people from a protestant

background as “that lot”. Does that not imply some otherness, some division?’

Pat stopped stirring his tea and said:

‘Ach, sure that’s just the way we talk.’

They sat in silence as they drove back to Killtianna. As they turned off the Cavan road

at Tullyvin Pat said:

‘I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing here.’

That was the opportunity and Willie knew it but Pat saw someone he knew as the car

slowed at the turn and rolled down the window to shout out a greeting and the

opportunity was lost. The heart condition he had had some inkling about but the

nascent dementia (doctor’s words) had only been discovered when Tummins’

interrogation landed him in hospital. He was on the way out. He wouldn’t die at home

as he had intended. ‘Usually it’s a slow deterioation,’ the doctor said. A small stroke

here, a cardiac incident there and in six months to a year he’d be in a nursing home

wishing he was in the ground.

They got to work in late May. The archivist had offered to help but both men

intended on doing the work themselves. Both halls, the AOH and the Orange, were

small, square buildings with shuttered windows and a galvanised roof. Dust had settled

on the bare floor boards and there was a musty smell, a dampness in the air. They

carefully boxed the banners, the record books and the photo albums for transport to

Dublin and swept the floors. A man came out from the ESB one morning and

disconnected the electricity.

‘Some mornings work,’ Pat said sadly as the technician fiddled with the fuse box in the

Hibernian hall before heading onto the Orange Lodge to do the same. Pat had been

delighted with the novelty of having free reign in an Orange hall. To most people he

50

was an irascible, cantankerous old man but he had always been an awful messer. He

spent most of the time he was there conversing with a portrait of the Queen. He would

treat the banners (Somme, Derry and Boyne) roughly as he examined them and

complimented the fine needlework of the protestant men of Ulster. ‘Be Jaysus, Lizzie,

these boys could sew.’ He tried on a sash and eyeing his reflection in the glass fronted

potrait on the last morning he said: ‘I always thought Orange was my colour, Lizzie mo

chroi, and now I know why. Jaysus, I can feel the staunch in me.’

Willie called him a Fenian fucker and told him to leave off. He packed the sash away

with the others and took one last look around the hall before padlocking the door. It

was a clear, sun warm, morning and they sat on the bonnet of Willie’s car waiting for

the man from the water board who was coming to disconnect the hall from the mains.

Across the hollow, on the mull of Lappinduff, workmen could be seen erecting wind

turbines.

‘Jaysus,’ Pat said, crossing his arms and resettling himself on the bonnet. ‘He didn’t

have the decency to wait till they were cold in the ground.’

‘It might have looked like guilt if he had, I suppose.’

‘Well he lost out to them in the end.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ah, there’s no explaining it.’

He was silent for a moment and then started sucking his dentures as he did when he

was thinking.

‘Do you ever think it could have ended differently?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I’m just thankful it wasn’t Reilly that got them in the end.’

‘It was crossing the border that did it.’

‘It was Deirdre Macken that did it.’

‘How’d you mean.’

‘Ah, there’s no explaining it.’

They’d put her and the daughter on a bus in January and when she was gone the boys

had gone on the move. They torched the house of one of Reilly’s associates outside of

Monaghan and crossed the border.

‘They shouldn’t have killed that peeler when they went over,’ Pat offered.

That was part of it, Willie thought. They’d been stopped near Keady at a checkpoint

and although no-one knew exactly what had happened a policeman had ended up dead.

Were they heading for the Larne ferry or looking for a clear road south to Dublin.

Hard to tell. In the end they’d ended up in a small hamlet, two pubs and a post office,

outside of Jonesborough. And that’s where it had ended.

Silence. Birdsong. Curtains.

51

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52

December’s MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS:

Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s Christmas time again.

Welcome to the December issue of ANU it has been a hectic

couple of weeks what with the human breaking his arm. He should take

a lesson from us alleycats we always land on our feet.

Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone.

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don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to

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53

Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne

John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been

writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese

short form and has had some published success in UK , USA,

Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be

found here: http://john-isleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

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Again it’s summer by John Jack Byrne

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Mid Winter by John Jack Byrne

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October morning by John Jack Byrne

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John Hewitt

A tribute

(Amos Greig)

One island so many diversities,

Divided pasts and shared futures.

Hopes, dreams and fears

All the same, silence the greatest enemy.

You who saw that truth, sculpted words,

Fought for workers’ liberties, a social poet,

Attended Agnes street National School.

The voice of the left, unity your vision

Preceded Heaney, Longley and Mahon.

Quiet, when occasion called for it, outspoken

When driven to defend social rights,

Acknowledge your ancestral past.

Remembered by summer school,

Celebrated by arts and voice,

Workers in the pub

Which carries your name.

The quiet revolution loud and laboured

Left behind at closing time.

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