Walking down a street, knowing men died under your feet and that their blood stained the freshly washed cobblestones just three decades previous evokes a sense of ... temperance.
Like the horizon.
Like her smile, or like the light in a near-stranger's eyes.
Temporary as America or as the loyalty of three colors strewn together: red, white, blue
devotes fidelity to
Britain, America, Australia, idea, country, place.
Today we walked the walls of Derry and crossed the line between the "Occupated" and the "Free."
Oh, hello, northern Ireland where the watchtowers grow tall as the
steeple on the
three churches:
Protest-ant, Catho-lick, ... "Other"
like the blood across the banner in
Free Derry Museum
labelled "Freedom"
stained
with promise
like the shoelace tied
by the father who stooped
down on his daughter's
foot on the corner
of the first street in the
Bogside this morning.
like the anger in the eyes of a friend
turned stranger,
like the familiarity of
hatred
between her sketched
smile;
painted like propaganda
across the walls.
--
We've seen the Cliffs of Moher (pronounced "more"), castles and cathedrals, bridges and causeways and rivers and waterfalls.
And what words do I have left to describe it?
A halted lyric about Bloody Sunday and the Bloody Foreland this afternoon,
where we watched the sun melt into the sea
but the water stayed
blue: turquoise-blue as the painted sky
And I wondered why I was surprised that the world had not bled
red as the guidebook
promised.
----
This Ireland: the Ireland of ... the north ... is Red. Is Brown and rust
like the ship in Galway's harbor
but smells of blood, and not fish.
We crossed over into the Republic today to see Glenveagh National Park and as much as I loved, re-embraced the Castle nestled in the breast of the mountains,
I wished for the charred streets of Derry.
And I understood that when the brother of a man killed in Bloody Sunday
devotes the rest of his life to working the front desk of the Museum of Free Derry
so that tourists and locals alike can hear: understand.
I understood: that is Permanence. That is Age. that
is Home.
2 comments:
Hm.
I met that man at the Free Derry Museum. John. He was very nice.
Every though I've been here for weeks now, every though this is not my first time, my head still can't get around the hows and whys of things like Bloody Sunday.
Politics and power and empathy and apathy and so much of unforgotten history being forgotten.
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