It’s St Patrick’s Day, and I’m thinking about terrorism. So here is a poem from James Simmons.

From the Irish

Most terrible was our hero in battle blows: hands without fingers, shorn heads and toes were scattered. That day there flew and fell from astonished victims eyebrow, bone and entrail, like stars in the sky, like snowflakes, like nuts in May, like a meadow of daisies, like butts from an ashtray.

Familiar things, you might brush against or tread upon in the daily round, were glistening red with the slaughter the hero caused, though he had gone. By proxy his bomb exploded, his valour shone.