Bloody Sunday Poem

Lightings slaughtered

The distance, In the harmless houses

Faces Narrowed. The membrane 

Of power darkend

Above the valley,

And in a flood of Khaki

Burst. Indigo

As rain they came 

As the thunder radioed

For a further

Haemorrhage of flame.

The roads died, the clocks 

Went out. The peace

Had been a delicately flawd

Honeymoon signalling

The fearful marriage

To come. Death had been

A form of doubt.

Now it was moving 

Like a missionary

Through the collapsed cities

Converting all it came among

And when the storm passed

We came out of the back rooms

Wishing we could say 

Ruin itself would last.

But the dead would not

Listen. Nor could we speak

Of love. Brothers had been 

Pitiless. What could ignite

This sodden night?

Let us bury the corpses. 

Fast. Death is our future

And now is our past. 

There are new children 

In the gaunt houses.

Their eyes are fused.

Youth has gone out

Like a light. Only the insects

Grovel for lief, their strange heads

Twitching. No one kills them

Anymore. This is the honeymoon 

Of the cockroach, the small 

Spiderless eternity of the fly.

Seamus Deane - Irish University Press