Afterlives 2

2

I am going home by sea

For the first time in years.

Somebody thumbs a guitar

On the dark deck, while a gull

Dreams at the masthead,

The moon-splashed waves exult.

At dawn the ship trembles, turns

In a wide arc to back

Shuddering up the grey lough

Past lightship and buoy,

Slipway and dry dock

Where a naked bulb burns;

And I step ashore in a fine rain

To a city so changed

By five years of war

I scarcely recognize

The places I grew up in,

The faces that try to explain.

But the hills are still the same

Grey-blue above Belfast.

Perhaps if I'd stayed behind

And lived it bomb by bomb

I might have grown up at last

And learnt what is meant by home.

Derek Mahon