Fuck me, Tommy says, it’s Bob Dylan. The master of ceremonies, is how The Swan introduced him. Sure, how did you get your name, Tommy says to him, and John The Gun’s face is all covered in sweat, and the sweat is glistening on his dark skin, and the bright white of his eyes, and he says to Tommy, my weapon, that’s all he says, and Tommy is just stood there, like that, as the music kicks in, and John The Gun starts with these sounds, like the crackle on an old Como record, coming out of the past, he has an old tape recorder that he is playing Rebel Songs on and making them repeat in strange rhythms and next to him there’s an old guy in a bunnet playing the accordion and the first man up is an old Irishman with a circular scar around his head, all covered in rashes and wearing an old brown suit, he takes the mic and starts to sing, there are thirty or forty men in the room, all stood right in front of the stage, the Irish diaspora, they call them, boys as down on their luck as any of us, with their battered hats and their stained suits and their echoing, lamenting music, and now he is singing of place names, and it is like seeing Bethlehem written in letters on a road sign in the Holy Land, it is such a strange sensation, Bally-me-na come in, he sings, just like they did in the cells, into the toilet bowls, to tell The Boys where they had come from, to sing where they had been removed from and where they returned to, still, in dreams, there are tears and there are cries and there are soft lamentations, from Inniskeen till Kildare come in, and the places are echoing, forever, till Derry come in, from Eskra till Finglas come in, we dreamt of the places, and sang of their names, in our own time, overlapping with each other, till Galway come in, till Waterford, till Athlone, till Dublin, till Drogheda and Cavan come in, till Enniskillen come in, till Carrickfergus, till Coleraine and Letterkenny come in, is a cloud of voices, and in their lagging is a song, in London, as it was in the H Blocks, as it will be in heaven, on the arrival of The Boys, in the place of names, which is the place of endless echoes, The Calamity is what they call it, not The Troubles, Calamity come down, they says, as John The Gun starts to dance on the spot, clacking his shoes like in a tappety dance and waving his arms up into the air, and the men in the front have their arms round each other and the Irishman with the scar is singing of place names of Ireland and Ireland is in Bible time and the sound it is risen, in all of us, and here comes the sound