Loyalist Strike: In The Suburbs

March 3rd 1986

All February, no rain fell. Not a whisper
to lick the dusty glass, just the frost
having a long lie, stretched over the garden,
ignoring the dry cracked soil round its edges.
That morning, the little houses sat sullenly
tensing themselves for the power cuts, drawing
back into their shells, like frightened snails,
waiting. But nothing shook their quiet. The message
had gone home; the shops were shuttered, metal
faces blank in all the streets, closed stiff as ice.
At night, some cracks, some splintering; but sirens
repeated again and again that the fires were distant,
and the shots, and the shouting. We thanked God
we’d kept just on the right side of trouble
again.