Quotes from Derek Mahon

I lived there as a boy and know the coalGlittering in its shed, late-afternoonLambency informing the deal table,The ceiling cradled in a radiant spoon.I must be lying low in a room there,A strange child with a taste for verse,While my hard-nosed companions dream of fireAnd sword upon parched veldt and fields of rain-swept gorse.

You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! "Save us, save us", they seem to say, "Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!