Poems with pictures
Poems with pictures
Oranges are not the only fruit
Our roots, our home,
Our Lares, our Penates
Were fifties Finaghy,
Or, to be proper,
Ballyfinaghy -
''Townland by a field that's white"
(Or perhaps it's "clear"? or "bright"?)
A life lived on the edge
Of a semi-detached Belfast
That pushed aspiring red-brick blots
Onto an Antrim landscape,
Towards the foothills of Slieve Dubh,
The dark hill,
Black Mountain.
Each year, one moment of celebrity
When red-cheeked Orangemen clomped,
And wheezed unsteadily
Out, from mean-streets,
Five footsore miles,
To state their aspirations, their belief
In a bog, in The Field, (that field?).
To stay, knee deep in right and might,
To demonstrate,
A good three hours.
And left again
A slight unease
That that was that.
Such passing sense of place
Was not enough
For vaulting childlike minds
To grow up rich,
Endowed and well
Prepared for what may be.
Well, so it proved:
When middle-aged, and browsing
In The New, Full History of the Land,
It was revealed
That one King Lir
The leader of the sídhe, the Tuatha,
(Inhabitants - invisible - of some fairy mounds)
Had had his palace, there,
In that clear place,
In his, in my, in our white field, In our own
Ballyfinaghy.
Such pride welled up
To revel, to delight,
In being part of Time's great sweep
Of what had been, and still might be.
And yet, a part was well put out that
No-one had talked.
The children had been kept in the dark.
We should have been informed.
*****************************
Or was it all as seemed?
For every Friday,
In the fifties,
He would finish early at his work
Dispatching damask linen round the world,
And take the long way,
Down to the docks,
Towards that Kasbah, that bazaar
Of Belfast's Central Market.
And there, would rummage, rootle, eke
Out of his tiny, limited means,
Delights and pleasures for
A slightly travelled Northern palate.
Bananas, black, unloved, he grabbed
Fresh figs (despite much dental grief).
And last the prize - exotic, wild,
Beyond all dreams,
Wrapped tight and carried
This way up, with care,
Aboard a wheezing train
He juddered out
To the Townland of the White Field,
Bearing his gift.
Which was left in the dark
In a primitive fridge
All night, becoming colder,
Until the weekend broke
On Saturday, early, and a summons
To the parental bed
To see the master conjure up
The miracle of Finaghy's one and only, prickly, golden
Pineapple.
We swamped our faces, lips, and teeth
Into the wet sweetness
Of a Celtic impossibility.
Invisible to all, we perched
High on our thrones
(White, bright mounds of linen sheets).
Why were such riches due to us?
This votive offering? This sign of worth?
Only now is it clear.
We were not of that world
We were the offspring of some nobler line,
We were the children of another Lir.