Good Friday

               —for Belfast, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the peace (2023)

a lot of talk about peace is talk about talks
and talks about the size 
or shape of tables

at which enemies face enemy faces
when I close my eyes 
I hear the blackbirds outside

they were always there in trees dividing sky
with I am’s and I want’s here 
with longing I’m not

able to hear until I quiet and then they grow 
like overnight lilac
trumpets

some say draw a line under it
that’s what peace requires they say
as in those books

of spectacled accountants where a ruler
would mark an edge 
to ink off last year

and commence with the unblotted future
as if time were a heavy 
leather-bound ledger

and those who did what war asked of them 
and those who died 
and those who died

even when they went on living and those grieving 
the dead would all be 
left on the other side

above that line the old ghosts hover

beneath every line 
we pretend not to stare

how can we add up the columns count 
the losses and whom do we pay
can this line hold the dead

with the living
like sky holds the brief hour
of the bell

like our bewildering bodies spooling out 
the silver thread of our days

come spring
what do lilacs trumpet 
come spring

what do blackbirds say