you were flaxen-haired,

undernourished, and your

tar-black face was beautiful.

My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you

but would have cast, I know,

the stones of silence.

I am the artful voyeur

of your brain’s exposed

and darkened combs,

your muscles’ webbing

and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb

when your betraying sisters,

cauled in tar,

wept by the railings,

who would connive

in civilized outrage

yet understand the exact

and tribal, intimate revenge.

from Whatever You Say Say Nothing

I

I’m writing this just after an encounter

With an English journalist in search of ‘views

On the Irish thing’. I’m back in winter

Quarters where bad news is no longer news,

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,

Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads

Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint

But I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analyses

Of politicians and newspapermen

Who’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gas

And protest to gelignite and Sten,

Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,

‘Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,

‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.

Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,

Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours

On the high wires of first wireless reports,

Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavours

Of those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts:

‘Oh, it’s disgraceful, surely, I agree.’

‘Where’s it going to end?’ ‘It’s getting worse.’

‘They’re murderers.’ ‘Internment, understandably…’

The ‘voice of sanity’ is getting hoarse.

III

‘Religion’s never mentioned here,’ of course.

‘You know them by their eyes,’ and hold your tongue.

‘One side’s as bad as the other,’ never worse.

Christ, it’s near time that some small leak was sprung

In the great dykes the Dutchman made

To dam the dangerous tide that followed Seamus.

Yet for all this art and sedentary trade

I am incapable. The famous

Northern reticence, the tight gag of place

And times: yes, yes. Of the ‘wee six’ I sing

Where to be saved you only must save face

And whatever you say, you say nothing.

Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:

Manoeuvrings to find out name and school,

Subtle discrimination by addresses

With hardly an exception to the rule

That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod

And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.

O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,

Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,

Where half of us, as in a wooden horse,

Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,

Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

IV

This morning from a dewy motorway

I saw the new camp for the internees:

A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay

In the roadside, and over in the trees