Home

Once, in the Giant’s Ring, I closed my eyes
and thought of Ireland,
the air-wide, skin-tight, multiple meaning of here.

When I opened them I was little the wiser,
in that, perhaps, one
with the first settlers in the Lagan Valley
and the Vietnamese boat-people of Portadown.

© Frank Ormsby, Home, 1995, complete text, The Ghost Train, 1995, The Gallery Press.

Frank Ormsby’s little poem suggests that the native in Ireland may feel as estranged as the migrant.