Poets

Over time, you picture them after dark, in searches focusing on streets and houses close above the churches

Although we may have bolted from that sad cliff of our imminent decline, we are not Paula Radcliffe. And though we may have startled at the starting pistol,

Two rubber bullets stand on the shelf, from Bloody Sunday - mounted in silver, space rockets docked and ready to go off; like the Sky Ray Lolly that crimsons your lips when the orange Quencher your brother gets attracts a wasp that stings him on the tongue. ‘Tongue' is what they call the Irish language, ‘native tongue' you're learning at school. Kathleen is sent home from the Gaeltacht for speaking English, and it's there at the Gaeltacht, ambling back along country roads in pure darkness that a boy from Dublin talks his tongue right into your mouth, holds you closely in the dark and calls it French kissing (he says this in English).