A Letter to Ireland

A Letter to Ireland

Ireland,
the world doesn't know
of the divisions in Belfast,

of your walls
of concrete and brick,
ribbed thick metal and razor wire,
anti-climb paint on tri-prong picket tops,

of your black, solid-steel gates
closed fast every night
holding in hearts
as much as holding out assassins,

of barriers assaulted
by rocks, stones, and broken concrete shards,
by bottles of gasoline
with flaming rag fuses
flung by garbage bag slings,
of any garbage handy,
even a scuffed filthy mannequin
flung over to a church yard
as an incongruous missile of hate.

The world doesn't know
of the centuries old fight,
where even language and names
are not spared,
where Derry/Londonderry,
that proud old town
has come to be called,
“Slash.”

Outsiders don't know
of the invisible interfaces
which snake across the land
immutably dividing
republican-catholic
from
loyalist-protestant
in otherwise suburban and rural
quaint countryside.

When will your walls fall?
Will they chip away
in the wind and rain?
Will the graffiti covered blankness
be knocked down
by celebrating crowds?
Will the demarcations outlast
their physical selves?

How many generations
of your children will grow up
stunted by misunderstanding and fear?
When will no one care
the religious and cultural affiliation
of their neighbors?

When will you hear
the whispering of the dead
to let love drive out hate?




Copyright 2012
Rodney L. Aldrich

9/11 In Ireland: The Tenth Anniversary

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Crowds gathered to pay their respects outside City Hall in Belfast, and at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin.

The City of Belfast in Northern Ireland joined with those New York and around the world by observing 1:46PM, the time it was in Ireland when ten years ago the first passenger jet slammed into north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Belfast Telegraph reported Isobel Gallagher from New Jersey and her sister Geraldine McGeown from Belfast, at the city hall memorial, recalled the death of their cousin Jean Andrucki.

Isobel related, "She was in the Port Authority building,"Her mother phoned her to tell her to get the heck out. She said she just had to get two older ladies on to the stairwell and then she was going to leave. But it turned out the stairwell was full of smoke. That was the last time her mother talked to her."

Niall O Donnghaile, the Mayor of Belfast said: "We are not strangers to the circumstances where a loved one leaves the house for work and never returns home again. There are so many people in this city and across Ireland who live with that experience every day of their lives. So we share a common bond of hurt, of bewilderment, of loss between the people of New York, and across America, and Belfast."

A recorded message from the Fire Department of New York's Edward Kilduff was broadcast to those assembled. He thanked the people of Belfast and the emergency services in Northern Ireland for their support.

Mary McAleese, the President of the Republic of Ireland, spoke at the ceremony at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin, and said, "The television pictures are etched on our minds and the tide of grief has never ebbed.

Ireland stood then, as we stand today, shoulder to shoulder with our friends and family in the United States.

We share our remembering as an act of solidarity with all those who were bereaved or injured and with all those who gave their lives or sacrificed their health in order to help, for if terrorism manifested the meticulously planned worst of human nature that day, there were surely so many others who with no more than a heartbeat to decide, displayed a selfless generosity and spontaneous courage of astounding depth."

She ended with a plea. “May love triumph always.”