The Bitter End Of Dreams by E. S. Haggan
This is a story unlike any you’ve read before. Yet, it is a familiar story. One of fragility and fury. Of the poisonous sectarianism which continues to haunt Ireland’s blood. But, sometimes, even in the dreams of murderers there is a desire for a prize greater than any afforded by power and corruption…
Love.
In a time of slaughter
are we still capable of love -
truly knowing love?
As if in dreams
it becomes the breeze that softly shifts
between our downcast glances,
and snares itself upon the crippled light,
rippling over coils of wounding wires.
Here, love is the tightness of a pulse
stroking the trigger’s thigh,
smouldering mouths of acrid affection,
caressing hearts to Heaven.
Here, love is the slow, fading, glow
within the clasping hand,
that stirs tears to constellations;
jewels to stain each dusk
with blood-bright sorrows.
Yet - sometimes - behind
our brooding barbarities,
love, inviolate,
may weep from the devotions
we set before our lethal altars
forged from blood and soil.
Could such a love ever linger behind
a murderer’s glare?
Love.
Does it rise from each dream’s bitter end,
and with infant cries washes
hatred’s splinters out of savage eyes?
Belfast. 1978. Soaked in sectarian savagery.
A wild-eyed season of killing.
Here, as love may find an ending,
hope may find a beginning.