Written on the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday

My name is Murphy

A bloody name

Risen boiling from the sea

Tearing invading hoards apart.

A name ringing with massacre

Formed and broiled in war

Fighting for countless chiefs and clans

Swinging a bludgeon or a mace

With transitory loyalty

To King, or Lord,

Northman or Englishman

Raising up all battle

Death and blood.

My name is blood

Rebellious slaughter jabs down

And stabs the poniard,

Translating clansmen

Into the deep-delved earth.

My name is Murphy

Whoso list a fisherman

Using cormorants

Phalacrocorax carbo

as they do in China.

A memory rescued

From an Eastern book

All uterine vellum

Or rabinic gevil

Resting on the shelves

Of Clonard.

My name is Murphy.

Peering in ceaseless monasteries

With tallow on the cuff

Sight waning with the wax.

Pen scratching parchment,

Needle stitching up the splits

Like the sewing of a shroud.

Or maybe watching the

Cathach being scraped out

By Columba under the

Lugubrious eye of Finnian.

I am exhausted, sitting on a hill

Watching the blood

Wash down

The sloping grass of Sligo.

Cúl Dreimhne.

A battle over a book –

Book, brook of blood, blackened back

Dried back to blackened blood.

My name is Murphy.

We are born in blood.

It was shed for us.

It was shed for me.

My name is Murphy.