F

​Farset

Down in Belfast,
it’s the day same as before:
the Farset congeals
silently between commerce,
ships wrestle
for space in the dock,

commuters tumble
over quaint little laneways
too narrow for urban-living,
yet sweeter for their presence
in the secrets they reveal.

And somewhere, in a corner,
just outside the city,
there is a tear,
a drop that will not join the river,
a tear shed for nature.

Let the stones absorb everything.
Let the earth swallow
as much as it can stomach
and know that regurgitation
in only a portside away.

The city flows on, unknowing.
​

'The Big Fish' sculpture by John Kindness is sited at the point of confluence of the River Farset with the River Lagan. The Farset runs under High Street, being covered over mostly in the Eighteenth Century.

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Flags

Adorn the streets in equal measure
with paint-slurred mottoes and creeds
invested onto facades and councils,
dwelling in a supposed peace to celebrate
your identity;
is it PC?
Do you troop out of duty and love?
I wish I had a flag to be proud of.

Your cloaked stripes and colours have bled
into a sporting philosophy,
supporters spitting war paint emblems,
recognising each other's blood
in the grooves;
what does it prove,
that your system is mere hoodwink and glove?
I wish I had a flag to be proud of.

So you label the kerbs with designer spite
and tattoo your heart with self-absorbed pride
while I look on your belief
that you can fly where you want
with your hate and swords;
fear is just a word
that the innocent murmur in their alcoves,
but I wish I had a flag to be proud of.

Peace rally, Belfast City Hall

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Folk Museum

White chalk settlements: dust really,
and from dust, to man, to industry.
[The mechanics of living raised these homes.]

Technology razed these homes.
[It hurts to know you’re alive
but God has blessed us with work.]

There’s dirt on the ground here, 
dirt in the bed, dirt sewn into your breath,
found under thatched roves 

in rooms of peat and coal,
reconstructed lives of mud and straw:
a pig life, a horse life, a cattle life.

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Futurology

Is it time to lay the bombs down
on this city just like Betjeman’s Slough,
time to call the Grim Reaper
to come furrow with his golden plough?

Time to step to the danse macabre
and let Death have his small victory;
let History forget these urban arches,
there is no shame, but there is no glory.

Remove all the dead wood and stone,
come clean this mine of all veins:
clean out the stench of humanity,
a sulphur pit’s hollow gains.

When all the gold has been spent
when all the fuel has burned,
Belfast will be left to wait
for salvation to make its turn.

Graffiti, subway, Victoria Street