But I haven’t said goodbye

Reflections of Belfast in poetry and images Geraldine Fitzgerald and Richard Sloan

Inside front cover

Copyright ISBN etc.

(Title page) But I haven’t said goodbye

Foreword

Poems The Divide But I haven’t said goodbye At the end of our Belfast garden June RSPB Guide Disturbance September 2012 Outside the chemist’s Within our church walls Down Chapel Lane Teresa Armagh 1968 Morning over Belfast

The Divide 1. From my bed I’d watch a star between the red brick houses as it blinked distant over Belfast Lough past Titanic’s dock a daytrip to the sea the end of the journey a glisten and promise a dive into the quenching freeze along from the Orange Hall 2. And church not the church behind closed doors mahogany shoe-polish brown always brown doors behind which candles smell of incense ours low we’d call it not Catholic no candles except at Christingle when you have to be sure not to set fire to Louise’s hair – the duet Brahms lullaby Louise singing sweetly

and I hinge to her believing we’re rocking the cradle together and as I get older glances during the chorus of Jesus bids us shine from eyes that know more than I did After for the beauty of the earth I come home to the big fat moon

But I haven’t said goodbye The silent space of leaf drop Buttermilk Loney up the Horseshoe bend where bells still clang on Sundays up here among the hills which cradle river valley lough and shore a viewpoint once unsafe – long before then our visit a goat horns breathless giggles as the goat gores the door the wind has pushed us in from treeless hills in fingertip touch of the sky where we run freely before we are to know The leaf touches the ground down in the Lagan city years in the dark of our gardens–

Paras in the leaf drop

we fall from our youth into silence as the grey metal of the guns shadows the crouched figures sooted faces souls shining through their eyes

At the end of our Belfast garden the iron corrugated ribbed steel grey rises high above me They are beyond it I hear – from where I stand long deep green grass creeping towards the hedge bursting with fuchsia red blood red fuchsia with purple petals the colour of holiness from where thou shalt not comes To-day I sense the over there – over here the hills are sure Here the sunlight shields me from the ribbed iron face until the sun itself is obscured – then I’m over there knowing yet not knowing – struggling as the fuchsias spill

June We were too young to look after her she fell off the table we cried she was Ok On the eleventh did she walk across Agnes Street to see the bonfires was she not allowed to go past row after row of washed-step houses neatly stuck together from Cave Hill looking down A warm July evening the wall of the tall end house of the street bonfires piled high with broken chairs and the much-sat-at table with told stories farls eaten black tea drunk As the sun set over Cave Hill did she see the sky swept with peach and rosehip hear the bin lid women’s war cry dusk in the Ardoyne two policemen shot dead

RSPB Guide

Avocets and ravens migration of birds all of this we talk about until he takes me back back across the water through the veiled shrapnel then everything closes in on this day of sapphire sky he takes me into the silence of the night birds on their northerly flight there’s his story and my story on the streets on the border where he went on patrol at the edge of fear I wanted to say sorry thank God for the mountains he said my few hours off walking up Silent Valley I wouldn’t ask a ghost the way in him I could see the young soldier crouched gun in hand in our front garden in the darkened evening that look I can see them now the whites of his eyes staring from his blackened face

Disturbance September 2012 On the streets grey streets – prejudice boredom the heat of a dry day no hope and no Pope – simmering discontent in the name of name of what? They’re Catholic they’re Prods between silences – in this street grains of dust from the bones of disintegrated interest he said me Ma said

Outside the chemist’s You saw something you shouldn’t have to see fright lightning from nowhere strike down hit the ground Who’s around? Where? Must see drawn to What? We’re drawn to the stretcher the bandage around her head young girl shot

Within our church walls The exclusion of light and light through the window the misunderstanding of understandings: squeezing together in the pew the blue of the end of the blue hour blue of the pulpit on which a spring lamb is embroidered – soft-faced people in a quiet chorus of muttering

Down Chapel Lane We’ll collect you and provide you with a personal escort the three ladies said to the can’t protect-herself-from-herself-woman sitting on her loaned coat on this Belfast street where it’s time for prayers time in holy shop alley the forbidden alley the years-ago alley the gunman’s alley the lookalike priest oh for the sleep waves of Ballintoy, the silence, I wanted to take a photo of it, the lookalike priest gave money to the man hunkered on the street opposite the chapel the priest went into the holy shop opposite the garden beside the chapel just down from the betting shop there was the icon at the end of the long-garden garden, beside the chapel, the don’t-look-down-there-garden there’s something­-at-­­the-end-of-it-garden, in the grotto right here in the middle of the city, where in a minute I’ll be moving with ghosts in the city centre weaving in and out of memories, people from around the world seeing the soft edge of the sea and not the hard edge of the kelp store and touching my shoulder a soldier

Teresa for Teresa Godfrey And so I’d left not knowing the future only the past the boundaries the edge of them the leading to the don’t go over what was beyond who was on the other side It was you – You who were beyond my boundaries I with long tumbling hair emerging from dark days ­ Would I have talked with you walked with you Not on a frontline now there’s no need for a peace wall just a step, a stepping over years and the years we could not have met now leaves in the forest.

Armagh 1968

Through the woods in the moss forest deep into its interior by the unsteady tree certainty can be dangerous as you found in the streets Strange how the moss looks the same, as do we The dark in the forest full of uncertainty hard to see through to imagine how it would be to lean like the unsteady tree This wasn’t possible we moved in the dark you and me The dark in the moss forest is certain, I think Through times of uncertainty we walk by the unsteady tree to talk in the moss forest. We’ve moved out of the dark you and me

Morning over Belfast                                  From sky blue flax flower  you weaved your linen threads dipped in deep lake-dams braced with hillside cool our gathered fears seem held in the near side of these hills  cradling what belongs to us now free we gather flowers                                  remembering blue of sky  violet, flax and daisy.

Photographs

Front cover Mist over Belfast, Isle of Man in far distance Cave Hill, cloud inversion over Belfast Lough Belfast Docks from Titanic Hotel Goliath & Belfast City Titanic Centre St Mary’s Catholic Church, Donegal St Above Mill Dam, Ligoniel Lower Cave Hill, Ballyaghagan Black Mountain from Squires Hill Crows from Wolfhill Rd, Upper Ligoniel Cliftonville Morovian Church, Old Park Rd Chapel Lane Flax field Illuminated exterior of Titanic centre Albert Clock Rainbow over Crumlin Rd Courthouse & Goal Former National Bank, High St Rainstorm over Cave Hill from Carrickfergus Back cover Site of Sirocco Ropeworks and Air Conditioning Works

I

Acknowledgements

It has been a privilege to spend time with Richard taking photographs for the book. I often think of

him arriving in Belfast off the Liverpool ferry at six thirty a.m. on a cool September morning. At seven a.m. he was up on the hills of North Belfast to take advantage of the morning fog over Belfast City and Lough.  Our appreciation once again to Sue and Clive for their encouragement.  My sincere thanks to Lily from Ballycastle, my poetry friend for many years, and to all my fabulous poetry groups. Annie Freud’s poets, the Sherborne library poets, Greta Stoddard Kilmington poets and Bill Greenwell’s online poetry group.  A big thank you to Val and Jim, Fiona and Windsor, Rob and Peter for their valued friendship and support in our work. Thank you Robert ... to be completed. We are grateful to John Cooper for enabling us to take photographs in Cliftonville Moravian Church. Finally, both Richard and I wish to thank Gill Barr for editing this book.

Geraldine Fitzgerald is from Belfast and lives in Dorset. She works with Annie Freud’s poetry group and Sherborne library poets. Greta Stoddard’s Kilmington poets and online with Bill Greenwell’s poets. A love of walking and the natural world on Northern Ireland’s north coast and Rathlin Island is where she finds her inspiration and love for writing. “Velvet moss for my pillow” is the first book that Richard and she published together. This book “But I haven’t said goodbye” is their second publication.

Richard Sloan lives in Dorset and was brought up in Lancashire by parents originally from Carrickfergus. He has always been a keen photographer and collaborating with Geraldine has brought back memories of regular childhood visits to relatives in Northern Ireland and greater insight into the troubled history of the Province.

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