Our Bernadette at sixty

IN 1969, that Ulster gutter preacher

Ian Paisley

himself

with his Yankee doctorate from Bob Jones U,

unsmiling,

with

his dirty money salted away,

with

his imperial law

and his gunmen in the shadows

called herself,

twenty one years old,

"Che Guevara in a mini skirt"

(Her tresses flying free on the Derry barricade) —

That right windbag of a bloodstained bastard —

where in hell is he now?

@poetry =

Bua no bas growled hard lads, lasses

in pubs, prisons, dole queues —

Big Ian's bombast unfunny to the likes of them —

Seven bullets in her and she still had a laugh to share

Ya like my peace process 'do?

she smiled

touching her coiffed grey hair

showing off a snapshot of her kids

You know the thing I can't forgive

is that these wee ones

didn't grow up in farm country

as we'd hoped

with all the war

and all the war

for

we had to raise them in here

on this hard black city ground

just to stay alive

just for them to live

she said dreaming of flowers, fields,

cattle, dogs and sheep and

a running Irish child by a free Irish river

I had longer hair back then.

Yes, I did,

she smiles,

but I'm worse now —

far,

far

worse

Bill Nevins, November 5, 2008

From GLW issue 777