I’m pasting this understated masterpiece here so as to never lose it, and in case it helps others like it did me. A digital cutting from The Irish Times:
From Here
The word for it might disappear,
the road run through its invisible wall.
The view from here is the border
vanishing around an otter,
swallows, tractor, trailer and damsel-
fly, not so much law as a stretch of water.
Mind your footing on its thin air.
There’s the fault whose tremor you feel.
The view from here is a border
gone over and over, a fact of nature,
an impression that’s begun to snowball,
not so much water as law and order,
a wavering queue, a detention centre,
a dotted line turned block and fractal:
the view from here is the border,
law and order written on water.
John McAuliffe
Originally published in The Irish Times
