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.

*

That was hot, Blackie says to Tommy as he’s wiping his shoes on the curtain, but Tommy isn’t listening and he walks over to The Swan and he says to him, they do make plastic hearts, and I should fucking know, and The Swan puts his arm around Tommy, and we drink and we sing and we do other things that seemed impossible only the previous morning.

*

Mick from Ireland plays the pipe,

and what a con-flag-ra-tion

He plays the pipe, to goes to war

against forced immigration

It is his want

to spend his nights in wanton

con-cu-bation,

boys

But come the day

and mark the hour

of Holy Sufferation

He makes his

way

as martyrs do,

bold Fenians, of a nation

That stand as true

as e’er what do

in Holy

Buggeration.

*