Serenades
He’d weep outside my window
on Saturday nights
and thought I never knew his face,
I knew the voice
‘I hate blacks’ ‘I hate blacks’,
he’d cry, accompanied by
the shuffle of feet,
scratch of key missing lock,
intermittent sound of heaving
and sympathy from another timbre.
They were the Irish next door,
a family, a nest of lodgers, who knew?
The scrawny woman in their back room
threw chicken bones into the garden
then she thought we weren’t there;
though she consumed our lives
from that window,
as she strained to devour us.
Those were days when hate and contempt
were what English held, in open, for the Irish.
Those were days before I learnt
not to be surprised at the convolution of things.
Page(s) 21
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