Yesterday I was reminded by Teju Cole that it was the anniversary of the death of Seamus Heaney.
This morning, as I sat with the cat and the peaceful light, I took down my copy of Heaney's North (1975), which is both about the idea of North, and Northern Ireland. Opening the book at random, I read “Whatever You Say Say Nothing”
The poem begins:
I’m writing just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of ‘views
On the Irish thing’. I’m back in winter
Quarters where bad news is no longer news,
Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads
As to the jottings and analyses
Of politicians and newspapermen
Who’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gas
And protest to gelignite and sten,
Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,
‘Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,
‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing...
and it ends:
O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,
Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,
Where half of us, as in a wooden horse
Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.
--
This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees
Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was deja-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.
Is there life before death? That’s chalked up
In Ballymurphy. competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup,
We hug our little destiny again.
Then I opened the precious book to the page with Heaney's inscription (to the original owner, a man in Toronto), my left hand holding the curl of the facing page flat, and thought: his hand held this book just like that, before his pen touched the paper, on a day in March 1986 when he was still very much alive.
I hadn’t read the news yet; I wanted a few more minutes of the soft light on the oxalis and spirea, the seeping red of the begonia blooms, the slightly heavy lift of coffee to lips. Better, I thought, to listen to the poet speak of humanity’s endless appetite for conflict, while he manages, genius that he is, to work in Shakespeare and the Greeks, the Russian camps, the endless clamouring for news on the way to Ballymurphy or Kenosha, and have his company this morning as I “hug my little destiny.”
I copied out the poem and wrote this far. Then I looked up the details about “Ballymurphy.”
Eleven civilians were killed in the Ballymurphy massacre in August, 1971, by members of the Parachute Regiment of the British Army, which had already been in Northern Ireland since 1969. Britain had just launched “Operation Demetrius” which had the objective of interning without trial anyone suspected of being a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Members of the regiment said that as they entered Ballymurphy, they were shot at and returned fire. An account by Mike Jackson, who later became head of the British Army, stated that those killed in the shootings were Republican gunmen. This account was emphatically denied by the Catholic families of the people killed, all of whom were civilians. They included a Catholic priest, Father Hugh Mullan, who was trying to aid a wounded man, reportedly waving a white flag as he did so, and a woman, Joan Connolly, who was standing near the army base and then was left lying in a field for hours without medical attention, where she died.
None of the soldiers were held accountable and there was no investigation at the time.
45 years later, in 2016, an inquest was requested by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. Funding for the inquest was “deferred” by the ruling party, and hearings did not begin until 2018. The last witnesses were heard in March 2020 after 100 days of testimony. A report is expected “in the coming months.”
--
Now, I’ll summon the courage to turn to today's news.
I don't think I could have summoned the courage to look at the news after reading about Ballymurphy. Reading your post and Seamus Heaney's words, it all just seems so bleak, so futile. Trump insisting on going to Kenosha despite the Governor asking him to stay away. After the Democratic convention, I actually felt heartened that things would turn around soon, that Biden was gaining, that some measure of sense would be restored soon. Now, I don't know. The only salve seems to be walking in the woods and poetry.
Posted by: mary mccloskey | August 31, 2020 at 06:18 PM
I've been watching that bit of film (of the priest crouching as he walked - not surprisingly - and dangling that pathetic scrap of white) for nearly fifty years.
Over the years the arguments have ebbed and flowed. Why, for instance, were the Parachute Regiment - trained to kill in extreme circumstances - given a job that the police should have handled? Was it possible that there was a gunman nearby? - the IRA said no but their principles in what they considered to be outright war differed from most other norms. Bloody Sunday became a reference point and a justification for mass bombings in Brighton and Birmingham and the abduction, in front of her own children, and execution of a mother thought to have been a "grass".
The terrible thing about what were euphemistically called The Troubles is that they went on for so long that that one became numbed. The killings and counter-killings were eventually thought of as normal. When the Good Friday Agreement occurred prisoners serving sentences for terrorist offences were freed. This was quite hard to take and one had to remind oneself that it was for the greater good. Thus the matter of who did what atrocity became blurred. It was generally thought that this blurring might cover Bloody Sunday but it didn't; I forget the arguments (perhaps because I wanted to forget them) but the fact that the enquiry was initiated and has continued (however unsatisfactory, however delayed) might be regarded as some kind of gesture (however feeble) on the part of the British government.
Meanwhile the Real IRA and/or the Continuity IRA disagree with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and sporadic murders still occur - notably a woman journalist within the last few months. The Stormont Parliament in the North, in which the DUP and Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA) sat down and legislated together, closed a couple of years ago over what seemed like a petty disagreement. Ironically its politicians were forced back into their workplace in order to solve complexities associated with the pandemic.
I don't often comment on this subject. Perhaps it's as well to be reminded of it. Our equivalent of My Lai, perhaps, although that was brought to some sort of rackety conclusion. This may never be.
Posted by: Roderick Robinson | September 01, 2020 at 03:03 AM
Mary, thanks for commenting. It IS discouraging, and I agree that we each need to find our solace where we can. I was heartened, a little, by the revelations about Trump's remarks about veterans and soldiers, and that it came from his supposedly loyal FOX News. I sense erosion of support, and just hope it will continue until November and that the interference will be minimized. Wishing you some peace! I wish I had woods to walk in.
Robbie, thank you very much for adding your perspective here, since this is very much NOT my story, but yours in the UK. The closest I got, other than news accounts in the American media, was hearing Bernadette Devlin speak at my university in '71 or '72, and reading books. As we've seen in the U.S., justice for past wrongs is a difficult path. Canada has done better with its Truth and Reconciliation process, concerning the wrongs done to the indigenous population.
Posted by: Beth | September 05, 2020 at 02:18 PM