Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood

In spatters on the whitewash. A clean spot

Where his head had been, other stains subsumed

In the parched wall he leant his back against

That morning like any other morning,

Part-time reservist, toting his lunch-box.

A car came slow down Castle Street, made the halt,

Crossed the Diamond, slowed again and stopped

Level with him, although it was not his lift.

And then he saw an ordinary face

For what it was and a gun in his own face.

His right leg was hooked back, his sole and heel

Against the wall, his right knee propped up steady,

So he never moved, just pushed with all his might

Against himself, then fell past the tarred strip,

Feeding the gutter with his copious blood.

*

My dear brother, you have good stamina.

You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor

Pulls up at the Diamond, you wave at people,

You shout and laugh above the revs, you keep

Old roads open by driving on the new ones.

You called the piper’s sporrans whitewash brushes

And then dressed up and marched us through the kitchen,

But you cannot make the dead walk or right wrong.

I see you at the end of your tether sometimes,

In the milking parlour, holding yourself up

Between two cows until your turn goes past,

Then coming to in the smell of dung again

And wondering, is this all? As it was

In the beginning, is now and shall be?

Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old brush

Up on the byre door, and keeping going.

Two Lorries

It’s raining on black coal and warm wet ashes.

There are tyre-marks in the yard, Agnew’s old lorry

Has all its cribs down and Agnew the coalman

With his Belfast accent’s sweet-talking my mother.

Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt?

But it’s raining and he still has half the load

To deliver farther on. This time the lode

Our coal came from was silk-black, so the ashes

Will be the silkiest white. The Magherafelt

(Via Toomebridge) bus goes by. The half-stripped lorry

With its emptied, folded coal-bags moves my mother:

The tasty ways of a leather-aproned coalman!

And films no less! The conceit of a coalman …

She goes back in and gets out the black lead

And emery paper, this nineteen-forties mother,

All business round her stove, half-wiping ashes

With a backhand from her cheek as the bolted lorry

Gets revved and turned and heads for Magherafelt

And the last delivery. Oh, Magherafelt!

Oh, dream of red plush and a city coalman

As time fastforwards and a different lorry

Groans into shot, up Broad Street, with a payload

That will blow the bus station to dust and ashes …

After that happened, I’d a vision of my mother,