like the little black fellow on the marmalade.
It didn't hurt me in any way, and was
about as bigoted as my grandmother's drawing-room clock.
The worst that it could do was cover its face with its hands.
And it couldn't keep a secret.
And sad to say, it has been laid to rest in landfill Norfolk.
Though a wordsmith, I am in awe of the visual image
whose power in an instant, is vast and indecipherable.
And of the Red Hand, that never held a Kalashnikov
nor threw a petrol bomb. And that with impunity
got about on public transport.
The stuff of legend, it is almost, but not quite defunct.
And who would have thought that I would come to prefer it
to the insipid shamrock.
__________
© Cormac McCloskey
The Red Hand of Ulster has its roots, (not in Ulster Loyalism), but in Irish mythology. And it came to be a symbol of the Irish province of Ulster. An open right hand, bloodied, and set against a white backdrop, it appeared as a disk shaped logo, on "Ulster Transport" buses and trains. And in that context it was constantly visible.
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