CARRICK REVISITED

CARRICK REVISITED

CARRICK REVISITED

William of Orange is a Rastafarian dwarf.
The wallpaper shop in Irish Street is having a Border Sale.

When I came here at your age, Jack, this was the regimental
museum of the Iniskilling Dragoons

with Captain Oates’ uniform and diaries in a glass case
and that pride of Carrick, a Terylene suit.

With lapels to the shoulder. Which was what Courtaulds hired
its thousands for. This is what they wore,

those who grew up without incendiaries and carbombs
and the random killing of Catholics

and the idea of work as a precarious luxury. Can you believe
such privileged tribes wore Terylene?

Now there’s a chance that you’ll not have to remember
our long war, even from my sidelines—

the windows shaken by a miles-off bomb, the corpse
of Edgar Graham on the university pavement,

the radio silence after La Mon. For half your two-years’ life
the ceasefire’s left the dole queues undisturbed,

and Carrick shaken only by the flypasts
of the Queen’s Flight VE Day celebrations.

And in time, maybe, they’ll display here
among the muskets and the halberds, the unsurrendered,

obsolete Aks and homemade submachineguns,
The outgrown ski masks, the tilt switches

like desk accessories for underworked executives;
and the demilitarised children can be shown

how tamed these weapons are, how they will never
bob, rusted but fireable, to the surface -

but not yet, not while the wallpaper shop
in Irish Street is having a border sale, and the rasta

Dutchman lords it over the carpark on his plinth, head
and shoulders above the rest of us, larger than life.