(fornighsanfornighsanfornighs(openseyes)fornighsanfornighsanforevers)

and I catch a look at Tommy, and he smiles over at me, and I can see that his eyes are damp, and I slide my arm around his shoulders, at this sad sound of others, out of time but beautiful with each other, and now everybody has joined in, a sound like soft thunder, and the tape is playing the words back as an echoes, as a lingo that has fallen, as words that have upped and fucking died, in Bible time, forever, so no need of books, or storyfications, or words, for that, or for no memories, neither.

*

Behind the black curtains, hanging down, behind the scenes, the bloodied gears. The Swan leads us to a curtained area and down into another basement, into a dungeon lit up with flickering lights, where what appears to be a man – badly beaten and bleeding from the head – is strapped into a chair.

This is an Ouroboros working, The Swan says to us and he points to the figure on the chair. But what is the nature of the work? Tactical magic is the nature of the work. But what is tactical magic? Tactical magic is what is spelled (o-u-t) by the Father. The prisoner’s eyes are sewn shut, he is deliberately blinded. This is the UR-A, The Swan says to us, this is the IRA’s Holy Orders.

Stood either side of the prisoner are two men in black balaclavas with no mouths or eyeholes. Who is he? One of us? But The Swan says nothing. Blackie approaches the prisoner. He takes his cock from out his trousers. Now he is beating the prisoner about the face with it. He is slapping him on his cheek with his cock in order to leave a bruise. Now he is holding him by the hair while he ejaculates into the wound. Jayzus but they are humiliating him, Tommy says. A fucking double agent, must be, he says, and he is turned to me all in glee, and in laughter. Blackie comes over and gestures to Tommy and Tommy steps forward, between the men in the masks, and beats the prisoner over the head with his fist (all around the room men have their cocks out and are stroking their cocks in unison as they form a circle about the prisoner) and kicks him hard in the centre of the chest, which makes a sound, this fleshed sound, this body, that is hollow, is a sound, that is doubled, as a word, as Tommy holds the prisoner’s head up by the hair, his blind head, hanging sideways, his white skin, like a grub, as he punches him, repeatedly, in the face, is when the prisoner, like a grub eating its way out of the body, innocently breaking the pale skin, is come a word, and he starts to sing, in a voice as distant as conception, Bobby Sands has come to pass, he sings, through cracked and bleeding lips, through broken teeth, Bobby Sands has come to pass is his blind no-eyes, to enlighten the world is a cock-print on his white face, Bobby Sands has come to pass is it is Bobby, is it is Sands, it is revealed, whose time, it has come, but to pass.