Trouble Spot: General Post Office 1986 Poem by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Here, father, is this where it started?
Here we became strangers to each other?
Was it here?

You thought most of what we said was nonsense -
Even when we agreed with you:
Inheritors of the event who never knew the smell
Of gunpowder, or of terror,
Who never fired a shot in anger,
Worse yet,
Never stood up to one . . .

We retreated from you into the Pale of Irish;
That was our familiar terre guerre,
And the Ulsterman
In you
Could not follow our tracks
Or tame our barbarism -
Spenser's civilitie
Had beguiled you.

We took after our mother's tribe:
The high-blown ways of Munster;
You were the recalcitrant old badger
Run to ground by howling spaniels.

In later years, we tried again;
You learned to be charitable,
But we still had to tread carefully;
Your intelligence and sense of justice
Never practised deception;
I am the same age as the state
And neither turned out as you wished . . .

In this place, father, you are the unknown
Youth who went missing -
Neglect and awkwardness hide the key from my mind -
But I hear now the Northern accent
Of the elder man I loved with hard devotion:
Do you remember the rebuke you delivered
Before it became fashionable?
You spoke thus:

I see no cause for rejoicing
That Irishmen once again
Are killing other Irishmen
On the streets of Belfast!