Do you want to split Ireland

[P.J.]

Because, when the women sitting next to you ,writing an E mail
in what looks like Korean
and you find yourself asking someone named Suzie from Saskatchewan
for two bagels with cream cheese.

It suddenly still hits you, how it is, that in the blink of an eye,
down this street, where the coffee was rotten,
and a night out was a pint of sad smithwick
eventually emerging, in a withered hand, from a back street hatch,
the bar man telling a complaining Yank
the the lock broken on the toilet door
has been that way for nearly twenty years
and not a single shit stolen yet.

Kevin Higgins