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Four "Distillations" of Irish Speeches
by Tim Dardis

Another Trembling World

 
My heart is my poor
mother's home.
I am a political

prisoner.

I stand by the Irish
right to revolution.
My tortured mind

can never be free.

*

There is no novelty,
the usual Screws,
slobbers and despots.

The girls in Armagh,
unquenchable heroines,
I'm ashamed to say

their sacred names.

*

Mass was brilliant.
I ate the weekly.
My cellmate Malachy

ended the no wash.
We have toilet hours.
The Screws have petty

vindictiveness.
64 kgs
no problems.

*

Fr. John Murphy
had a Belfast double
Bloody Sunday.

Archbishop O Fiaich's sewer pipes
statement said to paraphrase
the moral conscience.

My dear friend Tomboy's
terribly annoyed: several
friends regained fighting spirit.

I have tomorrow
and Connolly O Cathaior.

*

63 kgs, so what?
A priest was weighing me
psychologically.

I smoked some bog
rolled blows today.

They put food
in front of my eyes.
Silly.

The trouble is
ideas.

*

I am abreast with utter disgust.
Reagan/Thatcher oppressed

jam with tea.
The Welfare toothache,
the camp aflame

tally the gun butt
vengeance God.
Poor crawler!

Brown bread and honey.
Wholemeal cheese.
March winds remind me

the road is just another day.
62 kgs
and very good.

*
The isolation process,
ruthlessly empty,
conquered energy.

Screws rob identity,
churn out law
abiding robots.

British logic
never conquered
our ancient nation.

Clarke, MacSwiney, Stagg.
Dear God, so many.
Knaves pay.

61 kgs today.
Not troubled by hunger.

*

Untamed clumps of eyes
torture my spirits.

I am free
in Communion.
60.8 kgs.

*

I am mentally
some wild-life
ornithologist!

Confined eyes
discover Our Lady.
60kgs and calm.

*

This hunger-strike,
a political solution

may improve
unflinching
English hell-holes.

Brendan disappeared.
James Connolly walks
through stark poverty.

100,000 bog conmen
mock my weight.
58.75 kgs.

*

The sparrow wrote
the dawn. The beautiful
lark calls my tears.

58.25 kgs

*

Tea pie and beans
exaggerate
a starving nuisance.

Ha! Up the Provos!

A certain Screw
does worry me.
The mercenary brutality

doesn't help my body
temperature. Cold
salt water rag.

POWs understand.
57.50 kgs.

*

St. Patrick's Day Mass.
They tried a plate of food.
My lip fights back.

Sure enough
everything returns to the primary
desire for freedom.

The Irish people.
The rising moon.

 

Poblacht Na H Eireann

The Irish name the dead
generations; her tradition.
Ireland, through us, summons
her flag and her freedom.
Her secret revolutionary
Citizen Army
patiently siezes
her exiled confidence.
We declare ownership
of unfettered destinies,
sovereign and indefeasible.
The long usurpation
asserted national freedom
the past three hundred years,
asserted the fundemental
right: comrades-in-arms.
Welfare claims
the allegiance
of guarantees.
Liberty declares
happiness and prosperity,
cherishing the differences
fostered by suffrages.
The Provisional Government,
the Irish Republic,
the Most High God,
we invoke arms. We pray
no one will dishonour
the Irish nation,
its valour and discipline,
its children, the common
good, the august
destiny.


The Badge

Religion is the badge
and identity
of Northern Ireland.

Loyalists support British
anti-mumblings. Half
a million Catholics
regard the island
an all-Ireland republic.

The Tricolour Anthem
labels the absence
of any language
difference between
Catholics and Protestants.

A united arithmetic
is too great for Ireland.

The tyranny of smallness
adds poignancy
to the claustrophobia
of violence. 2300 died
between 1971 and 1982.

28,500 shooting incidents.
7200 bomb explosions.
3100-plus bombs neutralized.
9600 armed robberies.
17,000 civilian injuries.

The tight-knit community
violence of victims
scapegoats and pawns,
the civil war climate,
compressed working class
Belfast. Immune to reason
Farmanagh and Tyrone
quarrel unaltered.

Cataclysm persists
the dreary, ugly
disillusioned tragedy.

When not in the local mountains cycling and skiing Tim Dardis is a cube monkey toiling for the techno gods. His work has appeared in Grasslands Review, Kinesis, and a bunch of other paper mags--but it's been so long they all must have dried to dust and blown away by now. He is the author of a book of kitchen appliance poetry, Refrigerator.

Email: tdardis@hotmail.com

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