reflections
Introduction
These reflections were composed over a few months in 2002 as I began to think about the many good people I had come to know in Ulster over the years since 1994, when I began to teach a post graduate course in local history at the Rural College, in Draperstown, in Derry. I made many good and lasting friendships there, and in some way they all contributed to my emerging realisation that I was a Unitarian, one who could hopefully see all points of view.
Joe McDermott
Ulster Catholic friends
I read the confidence in your faces
In the full blast of day
As you test the borders of knowledge
Defining your new reality
From Cullion in Derry
To salt works at Larne
You have sifted for insight
And I have watched your eagerness grow
On a windy day beside the Lough
Ardboe’s high cross long witness here
Cluntoe airfield withering into nature
A foreign instant in your past
You too speak the language of townlands
Teasing their yesteryears to life
Proud inheritors of your Gaelic past
You settle easily on the landscape now
Protestant friends
1.Remembrance morning
Enniskillen
I meet them as they go
Citizens Protestants first
Poppies pinned to sombre suits
To coat lapels
Husband and wife of serious mind
Assured despite the Somme
Or republican bomb
2.
In the aftermath of this encounter
I visit again my Ulster protestant friends
In Markstown Cullybacky
Or Ballymena gospel hall
3.
On the road from Galgorm to Ahogill
I plant my southern presence in Gracehill
Moravians here from long ago
A church a village school and square
4.
Another time we drive in convoy
From Neolithic site to standing stone
To Geordie Barnett’s Beaghmore
A mystery place among the Sperrin hills
5.
At Ballinascreen or Draperstown
In Derrynoid plantation town
Baronies and beer
Townlands talk and tea
6.
At Magherafelt the union workhouse
Now Mid Ulster Hospital
A green jerseyed vicar
Exchanges Irish rugby views
7.
In Desertmartin
In ruin an early Christian church site
While nearby Red and Blue and White
Are painted kerbstones
8.
After all is said or done
I aim my car for home
Into the warm south
Leaving my friends
To face uncertainty
My Ulster Pagan friends
My Ulster pagan friends
Gather at Navan Fort
At Tullyhoge inauguration place
Or Beaghmore stone circles
They have left behind
The bitter recriminations
Of Protestant and Catholic
Energised instead
By the pure joy of living
Once again they have returned
To their older fates
Where cracked thorns
And hazel rods abound
In the comfort of knowing
They rejoice
March to no band
Beat no drum
They hear the sigh
Of mountain and moss
Of places peopled
By mythical spirits
Oh my pagan friends
Blaze your fires
Of Imbolc and Lugnasa
Or when the hunt is done
From Beltany and Tievebulliagh
Let your flames be seen to all
Let your wild prayer song ring out
Across the fields of Ulster
Celebrate old deities
To those who gather round
Telling tales of old gods
Stories Rann and song
Where the scent is heaviest
Of wild flowers and meadows
Let us congregate
At Aileach or Boa Island
Chant round the old Ardboe pin tree
That cracks and dies
At the interface of gods
At Creggandevesky
Halt and smile
Where the stone people
Were kings before Tir Eoghan
Only imagination
My pagan Ulster friends
Can resurrect
Mount Sandel
Oh my Ulster pagan friends
I hear your soft voices
Calling across time
From all those places
Where earth and heaven meet
Cover
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