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Edited by Aideen Devine, Friday, 13 Nov 2015, 13:00

This is the first serious poem I wrote for A363 this year.  It's called Landscapes and it was based on a summer's day long ago when we used to have definite seasons, when me and a friend spent most of the day jumping from a fence into a pile of straw that was left behind after the farmer cut the field.  Our houses used to be surrounded by fields and they were great places to play.  Around the same time as the troubles were breaking out, the fields started to disappear as first factories were built and then the rest of them were turned into a large housing estate. The loss of playing areas was mirrored by the loss of freedom as society divided into their respective camps.   Then after the events of Bloody Sunday, everything changed for the worse and some dark insanity seemed to take hold of the world.  As the landscape changed so too did the political landscape. 

I've developed this into a screenplay which I'm working on again so I hope to see this on screen at some point in the future.  So I hope you enjoy it, comments as always, are welcome.


Landscapes

In the playing fields of childhood,

we spent a last, carefree summer's day

where life hopped, flitted and buzzed

in a concerto of movements and sounds

around us.

We gathered armfuls of straw and hay

and climbed and jumped, and climbed and jumped,

until legs, wobbly and weak

gave way.  We wandered home

like two happy drunks,

bodies tired but spirits light as

the warmth of day gently faded in the west

and the drifting hum of Sion mill

lullabyed us to sleep.

While we slept;

Darkness covered the land

An army of grey men,

Led by hard mouths

 - raised in anger,

invaded the land.

They screamed in fury

as they stripped the skin from the earth,

their unforgiving teeth

ripping into the soft ground;  Unopposed.

Uprooted homes were left to die

without care or ceremony.

The casualties fled in terror,

as fences deposed hedgerows.

Grey stone walls, set deep into the ground,

Divided, conquered, divided, conquered:

The gentle melodies of summer

were lost.

The dissonant cold of winter blew in.

We,

no longer free, confined

by barricades, borders and bigotry.

Thirteen people lay dead

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