leaving belfast

Leaving Belfast

for John Duncan

The planes fly so low over the houses in the east

their undercarriages seem like the stomachs of giant birds;

the skyline in town is the ragged, monitored heartbeat

of a difficult patient; the river holds its own,

and for every torn-up billboard and sick-eating pigeon

and execrable litter-blown street round Atlantic Avenue

there's some scrap of hope in the young, in the good looks of women,

in the leafiness of the smart zones, in the aerobatics of starlings.

There are good times and bad times, yes, but now you are

burning your bridges, and you are leaving Belfast

to its own devices: it will rise or fall,

it will bury its past, it will paper over the cracks

with car parks and luxury flats, it will make itself new—or perhaps

become the place it seemed before you lived here.

Leontia Flynn

Drives

Jonathan Cape

Copyright © 2008 by Leontia Flynn

All rights reserved.