Image: International Wall, Northumberland Street, Belfast – Bryan Ledgard
Crisp, frosted straw scatters over the once embattled street
Cleaner, fresher than crushing boots on industrial sinter
And leaving the station’s hintered history with icy feet
The brumal shock of a bitter winter
Through my sturdiest gloves to my knuckles bites
Sharp. I feel the cut of the wind pierce
My lashes, astringence drying the cloudy cornea
But I know that even as I force a tear
And fumble in my duffle I can only fear
The coming, through the dark dawn, of a whitening storm
That the grianstad’s¹ hiemal heels enform,
Vengeful and fierce.
I need somewhere and something warm
And I can smell the sizzle of Fermanagh black bacon
And a toasty potato farl breakfast in the making
And whilst it may be a hypothermic hallucination
Through frosted crystal fog a pub door’s beckoning light creeps golden toward the becobbled station.
While angered American Revolutionaries in 1779 began their slaughter of the Iroquois²
In Dublin volunteers united on College Green urging for safe free trade
The Bonhomme Richard was sunk off Yorkshire’s bird-wild chalk³
Cliffs as bewildered fishermen’s children watched the strangest war
Unfold its drama to feed endless parlour talk
But here, a brief commercial peace was made.
Unfettered Munster genius wrested elemental secrets from the land
Cased in single copper pots, thrice heated and distilled.⁴
That’s what the barman held now in his hand.
“This will convert you like Hermenegild”⁵
He said, “but you won’t have to die for the pleasure”
“I’m half-dead with the cold already” as demerara
Spoon-tinkled into the glass; a double measure
Lazily flowed over a slice of orange and lemon
A brush of cloves, and the kettle steaming poured
To open up the scents: unctuous butterscotch and wily cinnamon
Toffeed fruit, oaky vanilla, eugenol lightly floured
Pepper briskly waking the malted grain
Smooth nameless spices wrapping the seamless whole
With warmth that clings and laminates again
And again, each mouthful massaging head and heart and soul.
“Breathe it in” he counselled “and put your ear
Fast to the glass and listen for the bells”.
I did. The bells were distant but clearly there
Along with the clink of tin cups being pushed away from cells
By blanket men who wanted to be human or be dead.⁶
The Crown’s duplicity robbed them of the latter honour
And starved once, reprieved they stood by others in their stead
Who stepped in to face the torturing monster⁷
That kept broken bodies nearly alive
For the recycled pleasure of borderline killing them
Haunting their wracked nights, denying relief
That today’s dream tomorrow could prove but a requiem.
Now the walls proclaim them heroes⁸
In the full day’s gleam of tourist flashes
And documentarians’ deadcats and ring glows
But back then they were merely slogans and splashes
Painted over in the darkness by those watchers no-one, when tried, knows
Who dissolve into the night and slink away to deadlier sideshows.
I was far away that moment; the toddy gathered my impressions
At a distance; I’d been blown up (almost) once but I still had many lessons
Yet to learn; eyes to read; fears to feel and stories to hear
And a heart to keep open as closed minds drew near.
And today this year’s graffers are young and approved
Spray-canned and sparkly
Their aesthetic rebellion is more of a groove
Light-dancing with sunshine, not darkly
Menacing masked men and guns
But those figures we know from the walls haven’t gone.
We live in their shadow, their spectre still haunts us
But the hope and the love of the youthful exhorts us
Dream on and dream better, drop slogan and meme
And stepping in from another winter, in another town
Another hot whiskey seduces forth sorrow
For what we have lost, our hopes that crashed down
But yet braces one soul against chills of tomorrow.
¹ Gaelic solstice.
² The Sullivan-Clinton expedition against the Iroquois confederacy including the Battle of Newtown, in which 40 towns and villages were burned down and combatants and non-combatants indiscriminately slaughtered.
³ The French King Louis XIV loaned Bonhomme Richard to US Captain John Paul Jones. It was sunk in the Battle of Flamborough Head, but Jones had managed to board and overrun the smaller HMS Serapis and escaped.
⁴ Cork Distilling Company Map of Ireland Old Irish Whiskey – which changed its name to Paddy in 1913. A triple distilled blend made, unusually, with all three styles of Irish whiskey: single pot still, single malt and grain.
⁵ St. Hermenegild, who as heir to an Arian king, converted to Catholicism and led a rebellion. He was imprisoned in Spain, and after refusing mass from an Arian priest, was martyred.
⁶ The blanket men were prisoners in the H-blocks of the Maze Prison, or Long Kesh in the 70s and early 80s in Northern Ireland, interned or sentenced as part of the ‘Troubles’. When their Special Category status as politically motivated prisoners was revoked they were required to wear prisoners’ uniform. They refused to do this and dressed only in the single bed blanket they were issued. Some later were part of the first hunger strike.
⁷ A reference to the late Bobby Sands’ poem ‘I Fought a Monster Today’ about the brutality and humiliation endured by prisoners
⁸ The mural art on several walls throughout Belfast is now the city’s major tourist attraction.
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Stephen A. Linstead
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