That High Class Couple

 

I squint my eyes against the morning

as sun greens May grass.  I try to imagine  

soldiers even in this suburb of clipped hedges

and large houses, almost mansions, 
with blue flowers in the mown lawns.

 

In a room whitening with tobacco smoke  

like the cirrus cloud that wisps the blue sky,

a girl inspires me to relearn certain curricula.

I have heard of people being beaten,

tarred and feathered in bygone days.

 

I don’t even see it as a mixed relationship,

We’re both atheists, she laughs,

Perhaps it’s class, talks of a married couple,

one devote Protestant, the other Catholic.

I can only think of my friends in Falls,

 

The apartheid walls still pen them in.

I can see haunting faces pressed against wire.

Class and Catholicism would have conscripted

even my best friend as an enemy

of an unknown, beautiful and loving couple