who created him?
A model son he was, loved his mother, his country too,
for all its schizophrenia.
But he died, wracked in the rigging of his bed, and wasted
to the marrow of his bone.
I saw him once: not twice, or three time for the Trinity,
but until the pain in my face was a molecule of the pain in his spine
and I feared, that I might take away his hope.
And what did his mother do, to see her home consumed:
reduced to ash in the white hot heat of bigotry?
And how come she was still standing, listening to me!
to my excuse!
and not spitting venom at the bigots? Those rats,
Any on of whom her husband would have saved from drowning,
but that he, "drowned on maneuvers," while they
choked on their xenophobia.
Half slain she was, but she had loved and been loved.
A Boudicca in Belfast, and still nurturing young Lyons.
__________
© Cormac McCloskey
This poem is based on a Catholic family, originally from County Fermanagh, with whom I lived for several months in Belfast. When Mary's husband left the army after 20 years, they embarked on a new life, with a new home and a mortgage. But six months later, on an exercise with the territorial army, (a volunteer reserve), her husband was drowned. Her second son Bernard, apprenticed as a joiner, was a sea cadet. While I was there, there was some mild concern for him, as he was complaining of discomfort in his back. A year or so later, he died from cancer of the spine. I visited him once in hospital, but never went back, fearing that if he looked at my face, it would take away his hope. Months after his death, and by chance, I met Mary in Belfast. Talking to me in the street, she told me of Bernard's death and of how, (despite their British services connections), they were burned out of their home in Manor Road, by a "Loyalist" mob. Because they were Catholics.
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