Twenty one years ago today The Good Friday Argreement was signed by the Irish and British governments, the following poem was written by Damian Gorman last year to mark the 20th anniversary.
If I Was Us, I Wouldn’t Start From Here
Especially in a broken home like ours,
Where broken floors and windows feed the cold,
Each generation has a sacred task –
To tell a better story than it was told.
For we are reared by stories in such places,
Clawing through the bitter draughts of these
For something we can truly get a hold of
That seems to help us off our shattered knees.
The kind of myth my generation supped
Was, “We have better heroes than they’ve got.
For ours are much more decent – to a fault,
And if we’ve a rotten apple, they’ve the Rot”.
Our steps are now, at best, precise and formal
Like dressage horses going nowhere well;
Our peace a thing we part-baked in the 90s
And left to prove, and got used to the smell.
Yet even in this half-peace we are living
Where death is only half-dead, I am sure
That we could learn to change our tunes completely,
But if I was us, I wouldn’t start from here.
If I was us I wouldn’t start from here
For here’s a swamp we’ve stood in for too long.
We haven’t kept our heads above the water,
And haven’t seen a thing where we have gone
And we should fly now – frightened for our children –
Kick off the bottom, rush towards the air,
And break the water into different daylight
And gasp, and say what we can see from there.
For especially in a broken home like ours,
Where broken floors and windows feed the cold,
Each generation has a sacred task –
To tell a better story than it was told:
A story made, as honey is in bees,
From things that we have found outside ourselves.
Written by Damian Gorman