The British Connection

In Belfast, Europe, your man
Met the Military come to raid
The house: ‘Over my dead body
Sir,’ he said, brandishing
A real-life sword from some
Old half-forgotten war …

And youths with real bows and arrows
And coppers and marbles good as bullets
And old time thruppeny bits and stones
Screws, bolts, nuts (Belfast confetti),

And kitchen knives, pokers, Guinness tins
And nail-bombs, down by the Shore Road

And guns under the harbour wharf
And bullets in the docker’s tea tin,
And gelignite in the tool shed
And grenades in the scullery larder
And weedkiller and sugar
And acid in the french letter

And sodium chlorate and nitrates
In the suburban garage
In the boot of the car

And guns in the oven grill
And guns in the spinster’s shift

And ammunition and more, more
Guns in the broken-down rusted
Merry-go-round in the scrapyard –

Almost as many hard-on
Guns as there are Union Jacks.

© Padraic Fiacc, The British Connection 1977

Pardraic Fiacc remarks on the proliferation of weaponry during the Troubles. The ‘weed killer and sugar and acid in the french letter’ refers to an incendiary device.