Anu issue 15 / A New Ulster

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)

Featuring the works of Peter O'Neill, Chris Murray, Patrick Joseph Dorrian, Jax Leck And more. Hard copies can be purchased from our website .

Issue No 15 December 2013

A New Ulster On the Wall Website

Editor: Amos Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents

Cover Image “Dusk” by Editorial

Amos Greig page 6

Peter O’Neill; XX. The mask XXI. Hymn to Beauty XXII. The Perfume XXIII. Hair XXIV. Slave

page 8-9 page 10 page 11 pages 12-13 page 14

Chris Murray; Guildeluec and Medea

pages 16

Joseph Patrick Dorrian; Pipes of Peace (In the John Hewitt) Friday Elephants Time (as a river of pictures)

page 18 page 19 pages 20-21 page 22

Jax Leck; What did I learn from my mother And so I ask myself

page 24-25 page 22

Maire Maxwell; Best Helper

pages 30-31

Maire Morrissey-Cummins Sand Patterns Winter Wishes Fresh Paint

page 33 pages 34-35 page 36

John Jack Byrne; Argument Belfast Return Christmas

page 38 page 39 page 40

Peter McKenna: Dimed and Limed on Lappinduff

pages 42-49 On The Wall

Message from the Alleycats

page 52

John (Jack) Byrne; John’s work can be found

pages 54-56

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Round the Back John Hewitt tribute

page 60-61

Manuscripts, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 24 Tyndale Green, Belfast BT14 8HH Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 51 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/

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Published in Baskerville Produced in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

All rights reserved The artists have reserved their right under Section 7 Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 To be identified as the authors of their work.

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Editorial ‎Sorry about the delay with this issue sadly we have had a few issues a mix of physical injury and technical difficulties. Our December issue is a few days late but the content more than makes up for that. This is an issue of translations, short fiction and festive spirit.

For me art should evoke an emotional response be it a book, a poem, painting or music. I want to experience the emotional state that the artist sought to bring to the surface.

Sometimes you just want to escape from the mundane, the traditional and mainstream.

I was saddened at the recent passing of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela while I never met him I did study his work in part because I was involved in projects in Johannesburg, Burundi and Durban. I worked with street artists, musicians and reporters during Apartheid and watched with interest the transition from White ethnic minority rule into the Rainbow nation.

There is much still to do in South Africa they are a passionate people that produce some amazing art, music and performance poetry. I hope you get as much enjoyment reading the following pieces they speak highly of the artists who submitted to this issue, the translator’s art as well as the soul of the artist.

Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity!

Amos Greig

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Biographical Note: Peter O’Neill Peter O’ Neill (1967) was born in Cork where he grew up before moving to live in France in the nineties. He returned to Dublin in 1998, where he has been living ever since. He has been writing poetry sine the eighties, and has been published in reviews in Ireland, USA, UK and France. His debut collection Antiope (Stonesthrow Poetry, 2013) was critically acclaimed: ‘certainly a voice to be reckoned with.’ Dr Brigitte Le JueZ (Dublin City University). With over six collections behind him, he is currently translating Les Fleurs Du Mal.

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Five Translations from Les Fleurs Du Mal, by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) Peter O’ Neill XX. The Mask

An allegorical statue in the Renaissance style For Ernest Christophe, Sculptor

Contemplating this treasure of Florentine grace; In the undulations of her muscular body, With the divine sisters elegance and force in abundance.

A miraculous beauty, this woman, Divinely robust, yet adorably slim, And who is paid to crown the sumptuous beds, And charm the leisure time of a high powered banker, or even some Prince!

-But also, note that smile, so fine and voluptuous, That is where conceit flourishes in ecstasy; In that long sly, languorous look which secretly mocks; Behind that cute pout, framed in gauze, And, where every single movement whispers conspiratorially: “ Voluptuousness calls, and ‘Love’ crowns me!”

To this gifted ‘Be-ing’, blessed with such majesty, See what further acts of kindness are bestowed!

Come, close up and see for yourself.

Oh blasphemous art! Oh, deadly surprise!

The woman who promises so much, and with such a divine body, In the end turns into a two-headed monster!

- Ah no! It is but a mask she wears, there is something else beneath...

Her face now is lit up by an exquisite grimace, And look now, tightening into an atrocious fist, The real head, and the sincere face Out of the shadows of the one which lied.

Poor great beauty! In the magnificent river Of whose tears flow into my worried heart; 8

Your lies stone, and my soul drowns, In the tragic waters which swell up in your eyes.

But why does she cry? She, a perfect beauty Who can walk over the whole human race, What mysterious evil gnaws away at her athletic flanks?

- She cries, because she is incensed by the fact that she has lived!

And because she lives! But what she hates even more Is the fact, and this is what really brings her to her knees, Is the fact that tomorrow, alas, she will have to live again!

And the day after, and the day after that again, and always!

Just like any of us.

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XXI. Hymn to Beauty

O Beauty, did you come from the sky profound, Or from the abyss? Your look, both infernal and divine, Verse confusion, benevolence with crime, So that we can compare your effect on men to that of wine.

Within your eye is contained both dusk and dawn, Your perfume is atomised in the night storm; Your kisses are a filter, your mouth a carafe Which makes men weak, and children courageous.

Did you descend from some black hole, or from some comet?

Destiny, charmed by you, follows like a dog; You sow, by chance, both joy and catastrophe, And you govern everything, answering to none.

You walk over the dead, Beauty, whom you mock; Among your many jewels Horror is not the least charming, And Death among your most valuable heirlooms, Which I have seen you cavorting with upon your belly.

Ephemeral marvels gravitate towards you: candelabra, Crackle, flame and say: “Bless this flame!”

Panting the lover leans towards his beloved, A mere mortal caressing his tomb.

From heaven or hell where do you come from, O Beauty? Enormous monstrosity, hideous ingénue!

Can your eye, your smile, your foot open a door To the infinite that I have yet to know?

Angel or demon? who cares which one you are As long as you – elf with the velour eyes – Rhythm, perfume, glimmer, my soul queen; Show me a universe less hideous and heavy as this.

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XXII. The Perfume

When, with both eyes closed, on a warm Autumn night, I inhale the scent coming from your two warm breasts, I see before me a land of fantasy playing out behind my eyes, Which further clarifies the fires emitting from the monotonous sun.

There a bounteous island dwells and where nature affords Singular trees with delicious fruit, and where can also be seen Walking among them the bodies of slim, yet vigorous, men, And women whose frankness simply shocks.

Guided by your scent to such a charming climate, I see also a port filled with sails from boats Still recovering from the sea’s waves.

As long as the scent of your perfume Keeps circling the air, entering my nostrils, Mixing with my soul, I’ll still hear also the low chant of the sailors.

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XXIII. Hair

You introduced me to the musical; tresses, locks And curls! O sweetened perfume charged with nonchalance.

Ecstasy! To somehow people my mind, in some obscure place, With memories, deep within, and evoked by some fetish; This lock of hair of yours, which triggers them like a talisman.

Languorous Asia and burning Africa, Whole continents forgotten are exhumed, By breathing in the depths of this bit of your aromatic forest – Just as others may recall an obsessive love on hearing Some old tune, so you, to me, are deeply evoked in this heady perfume.

So, I can return again to that place where trees, full of sap, And men, live easily with one another.

This stolen tress is the oil which lubricates the dream, Evokes the sea of ebony into which I once plunged, Filled with sail, oarsmen, and chants in a maelstrom.

You then were a hidden cove for my soul to drink from, And in great gulps; a perfume of sounds and colour.

All the vessels gliding upon a golden spray, Opening their great sails to embrace the winds, The inferno that is the air blown by a sirocco.

Drunk with my love for you I would plunge my head Deep into your black ocean, where your Other self lay hidden, And my subtle spirit, which your waves caressed, Would find you there in a longing slumber.

There, infinity embraced us within its hold.

Raven’s hair, pavilion of funerary games, You sent me into the aZure of space and rounds, 12

On your quilted flanks, ensnared in your tresses, Willingly drunk on you and all of your enchantments; All are being evoked now in the scent of coconut oil and musk, mixing with the smells coming from the street.

For what seems an eternity, you have been emblazoned upon my mind, Smouldering there like a ruby, pearls and sapphires, And to appease finally my desire you have never abandoned me, Are you not then my oasis, or some profound well, From which I sip from the wines of these intoxicating memories?

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XXIV. Slave

Vessel of sorrow, great taciturn one, I adore you in equal measure as the gaping night.

And I love you more Beauty as you disappear And reappear to me ironically accumulating, Night treasure, in enough places To distance my arms from the blue immensity.

I advance to attack, clinging to these assaults Like a choir of worms lunching upon a corpse, And I cherish, o implacable and cruel beast, The coldness which you cultivate and Which only makes me appear to love you even more.

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Biographical Note: Chris Murray Chris Murray is a City and Guilds Stone-cutter. Her poetry is published in Ropes Magazine, Crannóg Magazine, The Burning Bush Online Revival Meeting (Issue 1), Carty’s Poetry Journal, Caper Literary Journal , CanCan The Southword Journal (MLC) and the Diversity Blog (PIWWC; PEN International Women Writer’s Committee). Her poem for three voices, Lament, was performed at the Béal festival in 2012. She has reviewed poetry for Post (Mater dei Institute),Poetry Ireland and Writing.ie. Chris writes a poetry blog called Poethead which is dedicated to the writing, editing and translation of women writers. She is a member of the International PEN Women Writer’s Committee, and the Social Media coordinator and Web-developer for Irish PEN

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Guildeluec and Medea.

(Chris Murray) Guildeluec concedes what defeats Warm welcomes with spirit love The mistress of Eliduc, Guiladun.

Medea, flamethrower, mother of two Depleted by the phantasmagoria of the wedding queue Impregnates the crown, the robe with her poison smoke.

Her sceptre, a wand. She is flame, frozenGuildeluec, smooth, concedes what defeats God-wed, she knows love to be green; 'Winter is brown, desire in potentiate'

what stirs?

(She a heavenly kingdom has bought!)

Medea, yellow crocus, evergreen.

Is new-gilded each spring. Her name is not forgot.

-Like Guildeluec's.

Note: Guildeluec bought a convent when her husband had an affair becoming a secular abbess. Medea is the name we remember negatively.

The story of Eliduc and the two women is from 'The Ebony Tower', by John Fowles.

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Biographical Note: Joseph Patrick Dorrian Patrick Dorrian is Belfast born bred and buttered as McDowell would say. He retired from teaching in 2007 after 30 years struggling in west Belfast. Patrick is married to Frances and they have 3 offspring all adults now. He has dabbled with poetry for several decades as a means of escape and last year Patrick had a poem about Palestine published in a magazine in Europe, his first publication.

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Pipes of Peace (In the John Hewitt) (Patrick J. Dorrian)

The twee of them framed, two from the lately deceased; poetically thought to demonstrate some inherent desire for peace, which must have descended with age, on heavy shoulders.

Late to politics, after the gun, discussion post explosion.

Well who would have thought it? killers can be reasonable too.

The three of them framed under "Pipes of peace".

Funny, no smoke, no cordite smell, just sulphur.

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Friday (Joseph Patrick Dorrian)

I'm in the Black Box again, Helena's here working, in her own way, a piece of installation art but mobile.

Tomas too, all silver haired, he should be Argentinian.

On the screen Buster Keating, wrestling steamboats, girls and hurricanes while the blues are played subtley in background.

It's Friday night. I'm in the black books, again, chagrine shines like a lantern on the disappointed faces, red with anger and not alcohol.

But I'm in the Black Box again, I'm relaxed even when the fire alarm responds to burnt pizza and Elena blushes.

I'm in the Black Box.

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Elephants (Joseph Patrick Dorrian)

Belfast Zoo, it perches on the slopes of Ben Madigan, above the city but within.

Within, the exotica of the animal world, housed for edutainment, a zooarama.

Yet within this internment, humanity.

When Belfast was a war target; the ships and planes built there, ( some miles from the zoo), attracted the bombers from Germany; some hit these targets, many missed but always the bangs upset the animals.

Destroying the animals seemed more humane, and soit was to be.

But the lady keeper of the elephant told her she'd be safe with her and nightly took it home, away from the zoo, across to suburbia and into her garden, a refugee of war.

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There is a play on tour now, celebrating this ladies humanity, a fitting tribute, no doubt. A film of the story? geez that'd be good get the message out, Belfast folk can be compassionate too.

Lo, there is a film being made!

In Germany!

The story's transposed to Hamburg and it's Zoo. Do Germans do Irony?

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Time (as a river of pictures) (Joseph Patrick Dorrian) Time (as a river of pictures) Each frame of vision passes, Some colour, mixed with monochrome, soon sorted by one's cones and rods into memory blocks.

Stored in neurons 'til chemical release signals a want or need.

Sometimes, out of sync, the light, wiggles and waves in passage, is this a particle package acting like a wave, to beat incessantly on the diffraction grate of memory?

Do blind spots count against the whole picture?

Or intelligence find the closure between the gaps?

Do still lifes move in the moment I blink?

Does all life cease when I die?

And if time is a river of pictures, does perspective colour one's view?

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Biographical Note: Jax Leck

Jax Leck is relatively new to poetry but is not new to writing, Jax has had one science fantasy book published and another on the way.

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WHAT DID I LEARN FROM MY MOTHER (Jax Leck) She is an enigma, my mother, flapping and fussing over biscuit crumbs and dog hairs, lamenting the loss of the golden days of her youth, which were anything but golden, but she will never admit this even to herself, so she invents tales of a happy childhood where her alcoholic father never crashed in the TT, losing a finger and his sweetness but instead told her stories and fed her mind with wonders, as he held her close.

She is an enigma, my mother, as my father slid to the floor on hearing his daughter was dead she took charge and comforted father and husband taking him home making him tea with extra sugar for the shock; she called me to give the news my sibling 24

was gone, it was April the first, I asked if she was joking, calmly she spoke, assuring me, asking me to come home.

She is an enigma, my mother knowing the meaning of love and duty she has spent a lifetime pursuing one, practicing the other caring for aging mothers, dying fathers and a husband struck down in his prime, washing and feeding, a constant companion never leaving his side; twenty years unwavering devotion until love was gone, duty done, and she was lost.

From my mother I have learned that love can kill.

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And So I ask myself.

(Jax Leck) If I could go back in time change anything what would it be?

The possibilities seem endless don't they?

My sister was killed at 2330 hour on 31 March 1990 by a guy on a mobile phone whose attention was distracted from driving for just two seconds.

I could be there 10 seconds earlier grab her from the front of his car or lift the cat from the road so she wouldn’t have to stop.

I could call Heathrow get them to ground Pan Am flight 103 on the 21st December 1988 by making a bomb threat save the 270 souls on board, the people in Sherwood Crescent my colleagues who committed suicide after working at Lockerbie.

I could go round to see the lady in Radnor Street who called to say her husband was being violent again that she was frightened instead of giving her legal advice leaving a note for the next shift ‘ respond quickly to a call from this house.’

They are all great possibilities aren't they?

Which would you choose, save your sister, save 270 odd strangers or save one desperate mother?

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Or go back to the weekend of 12th February 2010.

A really crappy week at work. my department of three now one same workload, same pay tired and emotionally unstable I came home that Friday lunchtime found an old man waiting in my living room.

He was wearing a beige jacket and a tweed bunnet.

His hands huge and wrinkled, resting on a well-worn wooden stick.

Dressed and ready for hours before I got home.

He waited patiently for me to take him on his Friday afternoon drive around Glasgow, the city he loved.

The city where he drove his taxi before the stroke.

To Barrowlands to see Big Franks Telly shop To Hampden to see where he had played in the BB band.

To the streets in Maryhill where he had been the big man.

To the Asda rank to see his old taxi buddies.

He sat there looking at me with those big sad eyes and I took him with me, grudgingly to Tesco in Springburn leaving him to limp inside to get his newspaper while I tore around the store.

I came outside to find the car ignition turned over but unstarted the very thing that kills engines.

I swore and shouted at him.

I called him a stupid old fool for damaging my car which I could ill afford.

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He sat quiet his head down.

I knew as soon as I said them the wordsthat they were wrong, so wrong, so bad but I could not take them back.

I stayed enraged and he stayed penitent.

The next day I took him to Silverburn my penance, his prize I was still bitter he was still stinging.

It was Saturday the 13th of February I wheeled him round the centre where he tried to buy me a single red rose I told him to keep his money.

He became withdrawn, quiet, this big man, the life and soul of any party.

On the Sunday, St Valentine’s Day, he told me he wanted to go that he was done I took him to the hospital sat in casualty until they found him a bed and left.

On Monday the 14th at 0730 the hospital phoned to say ‘come quick’.

I sat and held his hand watching his wordless face breathing hard, a goldfish out of water until he died at 1600 hours.

If I could go back in time I would change that weekend, I would have been kind, I would have been the daughter he deserved.

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Biographical Note: Marie Maxwell

Mari Maxwell's work has appeared online and in print publications in the USA and Ireland. Among them: FlashFlood:Flooding for National FlashFiction Day 2013, Poetry 24, A New Ulster, The Galway Review, Beyond the Diaper Bag, Haiku J, Crannog, Revival, Boyne Berries, and Barbie Bazaar and Coping magazines. One of her stories was longlisted in the 2013 Over The Edge New Writer of Year Award. Another placed second in the 2008 Dromineer Literary Festival.

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Best Helper (Maire Maxwell) It’s Christmas time and Mammy’s at it again.

There is whiskey on the air and a flurry of activity in our Dublin kitchen.

Mammy picks up the bottles on the weekly shop. For several weeks they stand in rows, like soldiers, the labels sleek across the glass bottles. Their stand to attention is brief as they’re poured and measured. Emptied and replaced.

The earthy smell tingles and wafts through the kitchen. Mammy staggers from counter to sink to oven and back again. Even sleep does little to hide the black shadows beneath her eyes.

Mammy doesn’t drink. She’s a sworn teetotaler. These days though she’s hitting the bottle hard.

It’s the cakes that drink it up. Copious cupfuls of warm amber preserving fruit and nuts.

Love, Mammy calls it, and pours it out liberally for her children living abroad. A mother celebrating Christmas in the United States, New Zealand and Boston’s frigid suburbs.

On our kitchen counter the bowls of shelled and skinned almonds await their moment. The glace cherries have been washed and dried. The raisins, currants and sultanas weighed. The flour sifted into white cascading mountains. Dozens of eggs waiting to be cracked.

Mammy says I’m a big help. Her best helper, in fact. I’m the youngest. The others have all gone. To Boston, Australia, London, anywhere the work is Mammy says. She expects the world will have changed by the time I’m ready to leave. Maybe, she whispers, I won’t.

It’s our first holiday ever without the older lot.

I’m not sure if it’s the oven that makes her face so red, or if being a teetotaler means she’s allergic to the whiskey. Still she’s awful quiet as she loads the oven up.

The wrapping is the hardest part. First though is the rolling and blanketing of 30

almond and royal icing. Mammy likes to tuck and coax the sweet ground almonds around the top and into the crevices.

Your brother likes his almond icing thick, she reminds me. We laugh because he’s the very one ate half off our granny’s cake one Christmas! Mammy was mad but she and Granny laughed about it later over a pot of tea.

Mammy’s hands are gentle. Caressing.

I wonder what the airport people think as they load up the airplane’s belly. What does the US Postman think when he lugs the crinkled biscuit tins from our house to theirs with the smells of whiskey soaking through the layers of brown wrapping, and the waxed orange twine.

A piece of home my loves, Mammy says as the box is slid across the counter.

Weighed and stamped.

Mammy, my brother tells her from the USA, I could just see you in the kitchen sifting the memories.

My Mammy smiles. Soon, she says, I’ll be able to bake by myself.

Sure I can’t go so. I’m Mammy’s big helper.

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Biographical Note: Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins Mรกire is Irish, married with two adult children. She lived abroad for many years, working in Holland mainly and Mรกire lives between Wicklow, Ireland and Trier, Germany at present. She loves nature and is a published haiku writer.

Mรกire retired early from the Financial Sector and found art and poetry. She is really enjoying the experience of getting lost in words and paint.

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Sand Patterns (Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins)

Daybreak on the island, I walk the tide-line, surf gently caresses my feet.

I trace the imprints of another, feet far bigger than mine.

I smile to myself, thinking we are all the same, yet our templates are quite different.

I look to the mountains, carved lines like an accordion the pattern of storms past shaped by the shift of time.

My body sways with the pull of the tide, waves furrow on sand, claim my footprints with each new breaker, the beach wiped clean.

55 years of wrinkles stretch as I stroll, a map for all to see, and as I wade through sun warmed waters, swim with fish in oceans deep I am at ageless, floating high, sparkling under a vast blue sky.

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Winter Wishes (Mรกire Morrissey-Cummins)

I wish I was the chubby grey cat curled up, dozing in warm sunshine, hiding behind the flowerpots, observing a garden symphony unfold.

I wish I was the scarlet rose hips high above the trellis, eying the changing colours of the day, lulled by sweet whispers from trees, eaves dropping on scented rosebuds gossiping with hot pink hibiscus on the hidden underworld of leaves.

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I wish I was a striped bumble bee buzzing from lilac to lavender, or a fat spider weaving silken threads spinning trapped lives to death.

How nice it is to daydream, as I gaze through the window at a barren winter garden, with the promise of spring, the hope of summer, of light and warmth on a slate winter’s day.

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Fresh Paint (MĂĄire Morrissey-Cummins) Eventide, nestled within freshly painted walls, I trek through mossy green fields bordered with tender yew.

Shadows above the wardrobe take me to scented pine forests high, amid snow-peaked mountains on a dense winter’s day.

Candlelight flickers on the new white cabinet, a flame sunrise crosses oceans deep.

My breath rises and falls like a sprinkle of mist, touching the silent spaces between falling leaves.

Opening my book, I crease into soft white pillows legs long, crossed at the ankles, painted toes twitch for warmth, the nip of November, biting.

I snuggle down warm rejoining the search for a missing child, The story of Lucy Gaunt.

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Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://johnisleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

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Argument (John Jack Byrne) I walk along the crest of the mountains heather brushing my boots with a swishing sound, a skylark above me sings feverishly perhaps in an effort to gain my attention, what sights I see before me, even this agitated bird cannot succeed in distracting me.

Far below ,the lowlands stretch to the sea shades of greens and gold bordered by hedgerows of wild woodbine ,dog rose ash and bramble, laden down with the blackberry, the blues deep purples and yellows of the mountain slopes, the buzz of the bumblebee as he darts from heather to heather.

It is summer’s end and the trees are beginning to lose their lush green and are slightly tinted by Autumn approaching, as bit by bit she chills the evening air.

The lark sings louder now, as if determined to inform me of one with whom I share my life, and one who compares easily with my surroundings I make my way home without giving him an argument

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Belfast Return (John Jack Byrne) Samson and Goliath ,you’re still here proud on the banks of the Lagan you witnessed it all, standing tall and knew that our poor hearts were sagging Out to the west of you touching the sky are the mountains of Divis and Black they know of the peoples struggles and have seen every soldier attack For thirty long years a tormented city of anarchy murder and bomb frightened souls fleeing their homes cursing the hate they were fleeing from Armoured cars , and security checks and murals of heroes all Samson and Goliath, you’re still here and you’re still standing tall But peace has come, a fragile peace God knows it was a long time coming now you witness joy and smiles on the faces with no more helicopters humming

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Christmas (John Jack Byrne) Now the tree is all aglow, again it’s Christmas time cheers and laughter fill the air aloud the church bells chime Carol singers at the door with festive songs to sing of the holly and the ivy and the time of Christ the King Children wait so patiently and listen for the sounds of bells that jingle in the night when Santa does his rounds There upon a roof of stars his Reindeer stride across the great man cries Ho! ho! ho! make way for Santa Claus

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Biographical note: Peter McKenna

Peter McKenna is a writer from Dublin currently living in the UK. He has been previously published in A New Ulster.

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1.

The trouble started over the wind farms. Everyone was saying there was money to be made. Someone called it a Sicilian business plan. Said that you couldn’t make money out of it on its own, that it was the grant money that they should be after. Trying to make a living off thirty acres of Ulster hill would turn a man’s head that way. The only dissenting voice was Dinny’s. When Reilly sent his auctioneer, Bannon, out to the farm one evening to have a talk about the land up on Lappinduff it was laid out flat in terms that others hadn’t refused.

‘What good is the land to you at all? It’s a heap of rock and heather not good for anything other than keeping a few scraggly fucking ewes.’

It was a warm evening and Bannon was sweating in his suit. Dinny was leaning on the yard gate with one foot on the bar squinting across the hollow at the hills in the hazy distance. McCabe was burning gorse and the air smelled sweetly. You could just about make out the workmen erecting the turbines on Traynor’s hill. Every evening Dinny would stretch and walk out into the yard to lean on the gate, chew a stalk of grass and watch them.

‘Now,’ Bannon went on, taking out a handkerchief to mop his brow. ‘There’s an offer there that any sane man would jump at.’

Dinny hadn’t said a word since he had pulled up in his 98- C Corolla and Spick was enjoying watching his nerves get at him. He was from the town. He didn’t like the summer heat baking the hills, the horse flies or the smell of the cow shed and the burning gorse. He started to get angry in the deferential way of cowards and in short steps retreated to his car.

‘You’re a fool. I’m here to put money in your pocket and you don’t have the decency to act civil towards me. Well you can stew on your fucking hill.’

Spick stood on the bank of the hedge as he turned the car in the lane. Bannon pulled up beside him and rolled down the window.

‘Here, boy. Would ya try and talk some sense to your father, for the love of God. What use is that land to him? He’s only going to bring trouble down on the pair of yis.’

Spick looked to Dinny still leaning on the gate, his face wrinkled with a rare smile and then looked at Bannon. He tried to think who was the bigger fool. Everyone for twenty miles knew he was Dinny’s nephew, that his son was in prison in Dublin and Spick was mute. When Bannon realised that he wasn’t going to talk he shook his head, unable to comprehend these hill people in their worn dusty summer clothes meeting him at the gate and refusing to utter a word. He huffed and drove off.

Dinny was tinkering with the tractor as he did when he needed to think things through and when Spick ran up to him tripping over the dog they called Paisley he said: ‘Do you think that’s going to see an end to it?’

Spick said nothing.

Dinny studied his face with a troubled look and then, nodding his head to reassure himself he said.

‘Jimmy’ll be back soon. We’ll see what we’re about when he is.’

The night after Bannon’s visit Dinny took his old 12 bore down from the attic and left it loaded, standing in a crook in the front room. He kept the yard gate padlocked and at night Spick could hear him moving about the house. Most mornings he was found asleep in his armchair by the range. In the evenings they would stand in the yard 42

listening to the drone of tractors carried up from the hollow as the neighbours worked.

It wasn’t until Jimmy came home in August that they set to work themselves. Mending fences and moving the cattle to fresher pasture. Cutting and spreading and the making of hay all the time watching the skies warily. If the weather hadn’t held the cattle would have starved that winter.

2.

There weren’t many that would have called the Donoghue’s angels. They said that it was in the blood. Wild blood they had and it could be close enough to the truth considering the way trouble chased their daddies and granddaddies before them into the ground. Dinny had been wild when he was younger and Jimmy inherited the taint.

Swaggering around with his evil grin. What was said about them was for the most part true. They were involved. The cowshed was oft as not full of cigarettes or diesel for washing that had been slipped along some forgotten boreen and across the border.

There was a still in a hiding place under the boards in the shed and there was always the makings lying around.

You couldn’t say it was one thing or the other, the thing with Reilly. It was the result of an enigmatic tangle of feuding and grievance that you could trace back over the generations. What spurned them on was older. It was the landscape as much as it was anything. The clustered hills and rushy hollows and the lonely farms with their unforgotten secrets. Things the jackeens and the new men can’t comprehend. If they did they might have understood why the boys took to the hills to fight it out with Reilly.

3.

Willie Turner was a hue dyed Orangeman but a decent skin. When they stumbled out of the dark one night, Spick coughing out his guts and draped over Jimmy’s shoulder, the pair of them covered in soot, he’d taken them in.

‘What in God’s name happened ye?’ he said helping Jimmy lay Spick on the sofa.

‘Reilly, fucking Reilly, that’s what happened us.’

Maybe they’d been watching the house. Perhap that was how they had caught Dinny on his own. As Jimmy wheeled the car drunkenly into the yard that night the headlights had illuminated a terrible scene. Flames licking the eaves of the house from its shattered windows. Dinny lying prostrate on the gravel having been felled with a blow to the head.

The shotgun lay open and unloaded at the side of the house. Spick found Paisley still alive out back. He lay the dog beside Dinny and started to choke on his mute’s tears.

The dog was done for. They’d shot it. When Jimmy said it was time to go and picked up the shotgun Spick touched his forehead to Paisley’s and then gripped him by the neck. His legs kicked out a little before he died.

‘They’re saying it was knackers,’ Willie told them the following evening. ‘Robbery gone wrong. Tried to torch the place to cover themselves.’

He tried to convince them to go to the guards.

‘I’ll say it once more, gasun. Take it to the guards and leave off.’

Jimmy looked at him sourly and stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth.

‘There’ll be no good coming off this. I’m telling ya. It’ll only get out of hand and as it is you’ve done nothing wrong. They’ll be inclined to listen.’

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‘And what good will that do? Reilly doesn’t dirty his hands.’

‘He’ll kill you. You and the young lad here. – If you get in his way over this he’ll kill you and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘He’ll fucking try, I’ve no doubt.’

Willie saw it was no use. He ate some bread crusts and slurped his tea. Jimmy hadn’t told him that they had torched one of Reilly’s diggers over on Traynor’s hill that night and that the guards would be after them for it. He was a decent one though and he didn’t ask why they hid in the loft during the day. The next morning he cooked them breakfast before dawn and gave them what he could. Tinned fruit. Tea. Some bread and sugar. An old, tin pot. Matches. A half empty bottle of whiskey and a tarpalin he had used to cover dead cattle during the foot and mouth. They cut out over the fields as the sun rose.

4.

They’d been raised on the hills. They were used to the fine, blinding rains and the cutting winds. They knew every wet inch.

5.

Of course Dinny had weaned them on rebel songs. Oh aye, alot was made of it later.

Dinny’s collection of westerns. As if a few dozen dime novels could explain it. It was older, it was deeper but can you blame them for feeling some solidarity, some bond, between themselves alone in the hills and the Commanche. The Cherokee. The Cheyenne. The Apache.

6.

Healy cursed the rain which rushed at his windscreen in flurries. Hard weather, he thought and counted it a miracle that he had kept out of the ditch when he pulled up at Hannon’s. Sunday evening and the place was deserted. It stood at a crossroads in Limaheny. Wood panelled, lino floor type of joint. The back arse of nowhere. Hadn’t had a lick of paint since the seventies. Now it ticked over on the pensions of the old men who lived alone and scattered about the glen.

‘Pint there, Mick,’ Healy said to Hannon as he settled himself at the bar.

‘Ogious weather that,’ Hannon said.

‘It’s a terror.’

He nursed the stout and scratched his beard and waited for Tummins. The fucker wouldn’t be on time. He had arranged the meeting but he ran to his own schedule. That kind of thing stuck in Healy’s craw.

It was half eight and Healy had been waiting a half hour when Tummins walked in.

He nodded to Hannon and patted Healy’s shoulder.

‘Give us a pint there Mick,’ he said and when Hannon brought the pint: ‘Can you give us the room?’

Hannon nodded and shuffled arthritically into the back room to leave them to business.

‘Brave age that man,’ Tummins said.

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‘Aye.’ He’d told Healy he was thinking about selling up. ‘Looks like the gasun has made a life for himself up in Dublin,’ he said sadly. ‘I think I’ll just sell up and be done with it altogether.’

Healy had stayed alive long enough to know when there was something wrong. When Tummins started talking some shite about the Ulster title chances that year he said: ‘Get to it, would ya?’

‘Do you think I’m worried?’ Healy said when he’d finished.

‘We’re just putting the word out is all. Those boys are trouble.’

‘Well they’re dead men now,’ Healy said. He sipped his pint and thought it a shame that Hannon was thinking about closing the place. The pints were always decent.

‘Well we need to get a handle on it. First the oul fella and now this. I told Reilly he should wait until they surfaced before he made a bid for the land.’

Healy looked at him sharply and thought ‘This one’s tongue’s so loose it’s in danger of falling out of his head.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He called in Dinny’s debts.’

The drive home was slow going and once or twice the car nearly slid off the road. The rumours were they were holed up in the hills somewhere. Out in the open. Jaysus. A good decent country man would never hold with that sort of nonsense. If Reilly didn’t get them the weather would. ‘If you hear anything let us know,’ Tummins had said.

They would turn up eventually. They’d walk into a bar looking for a drink or Jimmy would turn up in Cootehill looking for the young Macken one. What was it that he’d heard? They’d had a child. A girl. Hadn’t been able to hack the town though. No, hosing down the crates in a chicken factory wasn’t work for Dinny Donoghue’s boy.

This made him chuckle for some reason.

When he got out of his car in the yard he stood in the rain trying to find his keys. The light above the door flickered in a gust of wind. He stopped and looked at the rain dancing furiously about the light. Another gust and it flickered again. He watched the late news and drank a cup of tea before going to bed.

When he woke up it was still dark. He lay awake listening to the creakings of the house and the rain lashing the roof. Every now and then a great tumbling gust of wind roared passed and rattled the gutters. The pattering of the rain on the flagstones had sounded like footsteps tracing a path around the house to him when he was a child.

Healy sat up, unsure of himself. He had never been one to let his imagination run away with him. He turned on the bedroom light and pulled a night robe on. He checked the windows and doors. They were locked and there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Before he headed back to bed he opened the front door and peered out into the rain. The light above the door flickered and he told himself he’d go to the hardware in the morning and buy a replacement.

He was halfway down the hallway when he heard it. A tile coming loose in the wind?

He turned back to the door and when he opened it he saw that the light had gone out.

He cursed thinking that the damn thing had given up and walked out onto the porch step to have a look. As he was peering up through the dark at the rain he noticed that something was crunching under his slippers. It was glass.

7.

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Imagine it. The word reaching Reilly alone in the house out in Lavey. Wrought iron gates and a stonework facade with a thin lawn that had to be resodded every spring, ornamental grasses not taking well to the stoney soil. Some disquiet must have settled in the hardwood emptiness of the rooms. They’d crossed a line with Healy. That was for sure. Be jaysus it must have kept him awake a night. And peering out the windows of his eight bedroom dormer, through the rain cloud and up at the hills he would have felt vulnerable, would he not?

8.

He was done for and he knew it. He stood, all eighteen stone of him, at the bar in Bannon’s and necked a measure of brandy, rifled in his pocket and slammed a fistful of coins on the counter. Sinead gave him an insolent look and lounged toward him.

‘Same again is it, Breffny?’

He resisted the impulse to deal her a slap. She had soft lidded eyes that seemed to laugh at him. A slap wouldn’t have done much good. She would have wiped the corner of her mouth and looked up at him through her tousled hair, her hand to her face and savoured it. Memorising every detail.

When she brought him the brandy she paused for a moment, looked at him and said, haughtily: ‘You haven’t asked after my daddy.’

When he said nothing, she bit her bottom lip, scraped the coins off the counter and took out her displeasure on the till.

The oul boy, Smith, was in for his lunch and Tummins heard him talking to one of the Matthews at a table in the corner.

‘Ya’d think it was the wild wesht.’

The word was out.

‘You were lucky,’ the doctor had said. There was luck and there was luck. The shot had glanced his side. The flak jacket had been too small. He nodded at the doctor and when the nurse finished bandaging his hand he had left the hospital and driven back to Cootehill. They’d be expecting him at the barracks. Mulharty was probably in his office expecting a sleek new D reg to appear, full of grim mouths demanding an explanation.

The boys that they’d sent up from Dublin the week before were unimpressed by the way things were being handled at the barracks: ‘In last few months, there’s been, what, seventeen incidents of violent disorder in this region and from what we’ve been led to believe they’re all inter related.’

He was one of those, preened, university educated guards with black rimmed glasses, a gym membership and an expensive suit. He leaned over Mulharty’s desk and picked through the papers that lay on it in a state of disarray. The type they’d call a bit of a queer down Bannon’s.

‘Obviously the concern is that it’s linked to resurgent dissident factions.’

The inspector sat leaning forward, cross legged and red faced. He was intimidated by the two black suited bureau men that Dublin had sent.

‘There is some link to a gang of former republicans, that’s true, but the nature of these incidents isn’t political,’ he said. Tummins could see sweat beading on his scalp through his thin white hair.

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‘Whatever it is, get a handle on it man. Make some arrests. There’s potential here for a major scandal.’

Mulharty laughed, a twittering, flustered laugh and the Dublin guards exchanged a look.

‘Inspector, this is no cause for amusement. Two men are dead and another’s missing.

A man has been shot in the stomach and robbed under your noses two hundred feet up the road. What was the name, Hanlon?’

‘Bannon,’ Tummins offered.

‘Thank you sergeant. And this man. The second man who was killed, Sean Healy, was a known republican. He served time in Portlaoise for armed robbery and firearms offences. Now there’s what’s really causing our superiors, yours and mine, down in Dublin to shit themselves. Special Branch were keeping tabs on him up until a few years ago. What we’re assuming is that the weaponry that’s being used in these robberies came out of this guy’s cowshed.’

They were on the ball, Tummins had to give them that. He tried to give up as little as he could but they were professionals. He gave them almost everything. Donoghue’s murder. The burning of the pub in Tullyvin that Reilly owned. Healy’s death. The Bannon robbery. The fuckers had relieved him of the nightclub’s weekend takings on the street in plain daylight and were back two nights later to hit the cattle market. When Devlin stepped in as they were tearing through the cattle stalls he’d got his head busted for his trouble. One of them had slapped him in the mouth with the butt of a pistol and knocked half his teeth clean out of his head. The Rudden lad had turned up bollock naked on a bog road the far side of Clones. They’d given him a good hiding but he’d turned up which was more than could be said for McCabe. He’d just vanished. Dimed and limed in a ditch somewhere up on Lappinduff no doubt. It’d be spring before they found him.

‘Shots fired at a cattle market robbery. Construction workers threatened by armed men. For fuck’s sake lads what is going on?’

‘We think it is relating to a feud over the erection of wind turbines in the parish of Killtianna,’ Mulharty said.

Tummins experienced a new emotion hearing those words come out of the Inspector’s mouth. It was embarassment and he decided he didn’t like it. Gloss it over man, for fuck’s sake, he thought. Don’t play the fucking bogtrotter. But no, he hadn’t imagined it, the look exchanged between the two Dublin lads confirmed to him that it had been said.

They watched them leave from the window of Mulharty’s office. The Inspector was fuming.

‘They’ll be back before long,’ he said, watching them getting into their car.

‘They will.’

‘Well, Brefny,’ he said turning on Tummins, ‘get it sorted.’

The word from Reilly was the same. It was to be dealt with before there was any more interest shown in the runnings of Killtianna.

Tummins didn’t think much of his chances in rooting them out in the hills but as luck would have it the frosts came hard that November along with the appearance of the aurora borealis not seen that far south since the Christmas O’Neill marched on Kinsale.

Like all omens, it was a difficult one to read.

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‘Because they won’t be long in the hills with these frosts,’ he explained to young Rudden as they drove out to Turner’s farm.

‘You think they’ll be at Willie’s then?’

‘I do not but they will be holed up somewhere hereabouts.’

For a man of his age, Willie held up well. It was all that Scotch blood, Tummins thought. Some breed the Ulster prods. The boys gave him a few choice slaps but he didn’t give anything away until they slipped a plastic bag over his head.

‘They’re with Devaney,’ Willie gasped. ‘On yon road the far side of Lappinduff.’

Tummins thought over it for a minute. He thought he recalled some relation between the Devaneys of Kill and the Donoghues.

‘They’re second cousins,’ Willie wheezed when Tummins put it to him.

The wild west, Tummins thought. He looked at his bandaged hand and then motioned to Sinead to refill the empty glass on the counter. It had been like something out of the westerns he watched as a child. Windows breaking. Net curtains fluttering in gun smoke. He’d been looking for a confrontation so that he could knock them off, nice and legal like, and by jesus they had given him one.

9.

Willie Turner’s ambition for the best part of twenty years had been to outlive Patrick McIntee and so when Pat told him that he was dying, it had hit Willie hard.

‘Cancer,’ he’d said, looking at Willie with a sad, serene smile and wet eyes. They were driving to Cootehill to meet an archivist from one of the museums in Dublin. Pat coughed and straightened up in the passenger seat and said: ‘I don’t want any sympathy mind. Not from you.’

He laughed and looked out at the passing countryside and added: ‘Jaysus, if one of ye is feeling sorry for you you are one thing and one thing only.

Rightly fucked. – Quare lot that ye are.’

Pat McIntee was the president, treasurer, secetary and – with the death of Arthur McKenna over the winter – the sole surviving member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Kiltianna.

‘So you’re on top of the world I suppose,’ Pat had said when Willie offered his condolences. ‘Best odds there’s been round these parts for ye lot in a long time. Two to one hey? Well, I’ll tell you now, that fucker in Drumkeady isn’t long for this world.’

With Art McKenna dead, the Orange order had gained an unprecendented two to one advantage over the Hibs in the parish. That was until Billy Orbison passed away at the age of eighty seven the following February. After that Pat, perhaps sensing victory, had taken to dropping by the farm once or twice a week and inquiring after Willie’s health. He seemed so assured of Willie’s pending death and his own good health that Turner had had a mass card printed up for the repose of the soul of Patrick McIntee, Tullyco, and stuck it in the frame of the mirror in the front room where it would be seen.

‘Just so I’m ready for the day,’ Willie told him when he saw it.

McIntee had flown into a rage. He called Willie a tweed eating, dutch loving, land grabbing, Paisleyite swine. It took three good measures of whiskey to calm him down.

‘How long have they given you?’ Willie asked.

‘Could be six months. Could be a year.’

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Willie nodded. When he got home he would tear the mass card into little pieces and burn the scraps.

The archivist from Dublin met them in the White Horse. He was a plump, modish city culchie with sideburns and a brown cord jacket. He shook their hands and ordered them a pot of tea. Pat started jabbering on with him in Irish but Willie had shut him up by complimenting the article which the archivist had writtem on the UVF in Cavan and Monaghan for History Ireland.

‘I think this is a very important gesture, lads,’ the archivist said when they got down to business. ‘I think the attitude during the troubles was to just let everything slip away.

You know, if it could be forgotten in parts of the country where there was this divide then it was best to let it be forgotten.’

Pat scoffed at that.

‘I don’t know if there was much of a divide meself.’

‘How’d you mean?’

‘That lot did their thing and we did ours and there was no badness in it for a long time.

Sure we used to share the big drum.’

‘Sorry? The what?’

‘He means the Lambeg,’ Willie explained.

Pat threw him a sour look and said: ‘Oh the airs and the graces. We called it the big drum and it was as good a name as any.’

The archivist laughed nervously.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘just from the fact that you’ve refered to people from a protestant background as “that lot”. Does that not imply some otherness, some division?’

Pat stopped stirring his tea and said: ‘Ach, sure that’s just the way we talk.’

They sat in silence as they drove back to Killtianna. As they turned off the Cavan road at Tullyvin Pat said: ‘I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing here.’

That was the opportunity and Willie knew it but Pat saw someone he knew as the car slowed at the turn and rolled down the window to shout out a greeting and the opportunity was lost. The heart condition he had had some inkling about but the nascent dementia (doctor’s words) had only been discovered when Tummins’ interrogation landed him in hospital. He was on the way out. He wouldn’t die at home as he had intended. ‘Usually it’s a slow deterioation,’ the doctor said. A small stroke here, a cardiac incident there and in six months to a year he’d be in a nursing home wishing he was in the ground.

They got to work in late May. The archivist had offered to help but both men intended on doing the work themselves. Both halls, the AOH and the Orange, were small, square buildings with shuttered windows and a galvanised roof. Dust had settled on the bare floor boards and there was a musty smell, a dampness in the air. They carefully boxed the banners, the record books and the photo albums for transport to Dublin and swept the floors. A man came out from the ESB one morning and disconnected the electricity.

‘Some mornings work,’ Pat said sadly as the technician fiddled with the fuse box in the Hibernian hall before heading onto the Orange Lodge to do the same. Pat had been delighted with the novelty of having free reign in an Orange hall. To most people he 49

was an irascible, cantankerous old man but he had always been an awful messer. He spent most of the time he was there conversing with a portrait of the Queen. He would treat the banners (Somme, Derry and Boyne) roughly as he examined them and complimented the fine needlework of the protestant men of Ulster. ‘Be Jaysus, Lizzie, these boys could sew.’ He tried on a sash and eyeing his reflection in the glass fronted potrait on the last morning he said: ‘I always thought Orange was my colour, Lizzie mo chroi, and now I know why. Jaysus, I can feel the staunch in me.’

Willie called him a Fenian fucker and told him to leave off. He packed the sash away with the others and took one last look around the hall before padlocking the door. It was a clear, sun warm, morning and they sat on the bonnet of Willie’s car waiting for the man from the water board who was coming to disconnect the hall from the mains.

Across the hollow, on the mull of Lappinduff, workmen could be seen erecting wind turbines.

‘Jaysus,’ Pat said, crossing his arms and resettling himself on the bonnet. ‘He didn’t have the decency to wait till they were cold in the ground.’

‘It might have looked like guilt if he had, I suppose.’

‘Well he lost out to them in the end.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ah, there’s no explaining it.’

He was silent for a moment and then started sucking his dentures as he did when he was thinking.

‘Do you ever think it could have ended differently?’

‘No.’ ‘No?’ ‘I’m just thankful it wasn’t Reilly that got them in the end.’

‘It was crossing the border that did it.’

‘It was Deirdre Macken that did it.’

‘How’d you mean.’

‘Ah, there’s no explaining it.’

They’d put her and the daughter on a bus in January and when she was gone the boys had gone on the move. They torched the house of one of Reilly’s associates outside of Monaghan and crossed the border.

‘They shouldn’t have killed that peeler when they went over,’ Pat offered.

That was part of it, Willie thought. They’d been stopped near Keady at a checkpoint and although no-one knew exactly what had happened a policeman had ended up dead.

Were they heading for the Larne ferry or looking for a clear road south to Dublin.

Hard to tell. In the end they’d ended up in a small hamlet, two pubs and a post office, outside of Jonesborough. And that’s where it had ended.

Silence. Birdsong. Curtains.

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December’s MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS: Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s Christmas time again.

Welcome to the December issue of ANU it has been a hectic couple of weeks what with the human breaking his arm. He should take a lesson from us alleycats we always land on our feet.

Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone.

Thanks again to all of the artists who submitted their work to be presented “On the Wall”. As ever, if you didn’t make it into this edition, don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to be included this time. Check out future editions of “A New Ulster” to see your work showcased “On the Wall”.

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Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://john-isleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

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Again it’s summer by John Jack Byrne

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Mid Winter by John Jack Byrne

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October morning by John Jack Byrne

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John Hewitt

A tribute (Amos Greig) One island so many diversities, Divided pasts and shared futures.

Hopes, dreams and fears All the same, silence the greatest enemy.

You who saw that truth, sculpted words, Fought for workers’ liberties, a social poet, Attended Agnes street National School.

The voice of the left, unity your vision Preceded Heaney, Longley and Mahon.

Quiet, when occasion called for it, outspoken When driven to defend social rights, Acknowledge your ancestral past.

Remembered by summer school, Celebrated by arts and voice, Workers in the pub Which carries your name.

The quiet revolution loud and laboured Left behind at closing time.

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All titles £10.00 per paper copy Or In PDF format £5.00 for 4 titles.

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