You Don't

 

Though you see your people

teenagers slaughtered as terrorists

numb to the scorch of lead in their flesh

and despite the white flags

and the Geneva Convention

they are deserving of death.

 

And when you see your brother,

a sixteen year old school boy,

unarmed but shot dead by the corner shop

you do not mourn his loss

nor do you wake crying

at night for two decades or call for him

across all those void, white years.

 

Certainly, the toddler

who hid beneath the duvet,

cuddled up against his father’s chest

as his father screamed:

please God, don’t shoot my child

was a Republican terrorist

and a threat to national security.

 

And when your own father-

interned and imprisoned,

his nails pulled out by tweezers

from his trembling hands

until he paced the house

forever at the height of complete

and terrified psychosis

 

and all you remember of childhood

is his madness and tanks

you definitely don’t feel it

and you don’t sail scared

across the Irish sea at fourteen.

 

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[Donald Meikle]

And to know it was all caused by a sex craved King who defied a Pope.