Tremors

The bomb exploded a mile and a half away
– our house twitched slightly, dust fell from the ceiling.
two men were murdered at the Cleansing Depot
– for days our street was full of bins not emptied.

Always the epicentre is somewhere else
– only the tremors reach us, gruesome, banal,
like the Red Hand of Ulster at Mount Stewart
gardens, set with tired geraniums.

It’s the hand I think of. The woman who lost two fingers
in the blast. She appeared in the paper, nameless,
ousted next day by more casualties, more dead.
Patched up by plastic surgery, Valium,

and prayer, will she pull her life together,
picking her way through a web of absences?
I start to notice people’s hands, as if
hers with its awkward gap – scars not yet healed –

is waiting for me. In the newsagent’s
she’s the one who can’t untie a knot
to lay out a stack of papers. She hands me change
cautiously; a coin rolls to the floor.

At lunchtime in the pub, she balances
a glass, but can’t quite manage knife and fork.
At the school gates she takes her children’s hands,
flinching as they touch where it’s still sore.

In church she kneels beside me at the rail,
holding her cupped hands to receive the wafer,
the fingers of one hand lightly cradling the other,
tilted slightly; trembling with the strain.

Everything she touches bears the print
of grief, bewilderment, courage. My own hands
ache in this bitter wind. My fingers itch
and then turn numb, as if they were already gone.