Carrickfergus

I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries

To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams:

Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim

Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams

The little boats beneath the Norman castle,

The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt;

The Scotch Quarter was a line of residential houses

But the Irish Quarter was a slum for the blind and halt.

The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine,

The yarn-milled called its funeral cry at noon;

Our lights looked over the Lough to the lights of Bangor

Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon.

The Norman walled this town against the country

To stop his ears to the yelping of his slave

And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting

The List of Christ on the cross, in the angle of the nave.

I was the rector's son, born to the Anglican order,

Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;

The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept

With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.

The war came and a huge camp of soldiers

Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long

Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice

And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long.

I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents

Contracted into a puppet world of sons

Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt mines

And the soldiers with their guns.