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Sunday 26 February 2012

FOR BARNEY GREEN

This is one for Barney Green, not a friend, not family,
we'd never met and thanks to a bullet in his old back,
we never will.


He was eighty-seven. The picture in the paper showed
a contented face wearing glasses, and a hand-held pipe
ready to light.


He loved a pint of stout after working hard on the farm.
He loved a football match and cheered Ireland in the World Cup.
He died watching.


This dapper man in a three-piece suit in Loughinisland,
O'Toole's bar, Saturday night, June in 1994,
one of six killed.


A plague on the laughing assassins. Blame it on history,
find excuses to bleach out your sin of cold murder
and sleep in fear.


This is for Barney Green,
may he rest in peace.

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