Ireland - a Divided Island Part Three

kaisers, kings, emperors fight for territory dispensable bodies left in the ground on foreign soil, unreturned militarisation of memory and folly an Irish nation half-wrenched from a bloodied and wearied empire red royalist hands command the northeastern corner southern civil war averting greater confrontation in the north division time-frozen along clumsy county lines uneasy breathing space for settling down and looking forward a future disturbed, distorted, deranged fascist and far-eastern empire building, convulsive harrowing holocaust humiliation rearmed, racial onslaught Ireland hunkers down in numbing neutrality, the past still hurting the north parading cross-water loyalty deepening links with a not yet fully trusted mainland neighbour the common cause of war now more apparent soldiers die in hundreds of thousands, citizens perish in millions hemmed-in mindsets corralled by northern uplands the Mournes, Slieve Donard, Carlingford, Gullion and Cuilcagh the sprawling Sperrins, Trostan and the Slemish plug Divis and Cave Hill at the back of Belfast, overlooking a city divided gerry-meandering around in-built majorities civil wrongs, community suppression, booming priests, long years of strife walls are built, tit for tat, atrocities shared para-military vested interest, ...no surrender!...rebel cries! prevailing winds ameliorate and change direction European and American knocking of Irish and English heads to support a coming together of two peoples on a partitioned island where thoughtful memory moves inexorably like rivers of time through the Lough Neagh basin eventually reaching the ocean where geology and giant steps are visible Lough Foyle heading out beyond a two-named city to seamless stunning beauty along the Donegal and Antrim coasts where agreement can still be undermined storms emanating from English belief in its belittled greatness seeking to build its own island fortifications straining Scottish union near point of breaking and self-determination but the mists of Ireland lift and dissipate exposing deeds, judgements and hypocrisy of church and narrow people shafts of sunlight entering young Irish thought the tectonic journey around the continental mass continues traverse this island high above the fray below Lugnaquilla to Galty, Knockmealdown to the Bens of Connemara Slieve League to Craogh Patrick, Brandon to Binnion Errigle and Muckish, magnificent sentinels to sad days in Derryveagh but God, his angels and saints will move aside as the two Irish minds fly up beyond to explore the heavens to imagine impossible possibilities mucky orange and green replaced by a worldly efflorescent blue