Sorry For Your Troubles. Pádraig Ó Tuama  

       S h a k i n g H a n d s

       Acknowledgements and Notes

      Do mo PD, le grá mór mór.

      With love, respect and thanks to Susan

      McEwen.

      A Reflection on Shaking Hands

      Little did I know on the day I shook the hand of Queen Elizabeth that someone I had never met would be so inspired to pen a poem in recognition of that much publicised event. When my friend and colleague Mitchel McLaughlin drew my attention to the poem I was amazed that someone should feel so moved to compose such a wonderful poem as ‘Shaking Hands’. I was intrigued − who was this person Pádraig Ó Tuama of whom I knew nothing?

      Some weeks later First Minister Peter Robinson and myself were invited to speak at the Peace Centre at Corrymeela, Co. Antrim. In my speech I mentioned the poem ‘Shaking Hands’. Imagine my surprise when a few minutes later I was introduced to Pádraig who, unknown to me, was among the assembled guests. I expressed my thanks and appreciation for his ability to encapsulate so effectively the symbolic significance of two people shaking hands.

      I have a great admiration for poets, the works of Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, Michael Longley and John Montague line my bookshelves. People, land, conflicts, life, love, death, hunger, reconciliation, equality, war, greed, law and loss all come under the poet’s microscope for analysis and outcomes. Pádraig’s poem ‘Shaking Hands’ challenges all of us on the hugely important matters of equality and leadership. Without leadership there would have been no peace process in the North of Ireland. Without equality there can be no justice anywhere.

      Pádraig’s latest work continues to challenge, provoke and advocate that a better world is not just possible but essential. Honesty, empathy and compassion are the hallmarks of this work from a poet who accepts that he too has a responsibility to help make the world a fairer and better place. Maith thú a Phádraig.

      Martin McGuinness

      Deputy First Minister

      Stormont Assembly

      June 2013

      Preface

      Many of the poems in this book were written as responses to hearing the stories of people who lived through troubles. The poem titles have spaces between each letter as a way of indicating the importance of silence, listening, grief and the things beyond words.

      Pádraig Ó Tuama

      T h e w o r d b e c a m e s t r e t c h e d

      a n d c r e p t a m o n g u s

      It is the tense vocation of language

      to contain and constrain meaning.

      Some words are better than others −

      ‘alas’ sounds nothing like keening.

      Some words deepen another −

      to be troubled is to be found bereaving.

      It is the tense vocation of language

      to contain and constrain meaning.

      [ t h e ] n o r t h [ e r n ] [ o f ] i r e l a n d

      It is both a dignity and

      a difficulty

      to live between these

      names,

      perceiving politics

      in the syntax of

      the state.

      And at the end of the day,

      the reality is

      that whether we

      change

      or whether we stay

      the same

      these questions will

      remain.

      Who are we

      to be

      with one

      another?

      and

      How are we

      to be

      with one

      another?

      and

      What to do

      with all those memories

      of all those funerals?

      and

      What about those present

      whose past was blasted

      far beyond their

      future?

      I wake.

      You wake.

      She wakes.

      He wakes.

      They wake.

      We Wake

      and take

      this troubled beauty forward.

      S o r r y f o r y o u r T r o u b l e s

      One time I sat in a comedy club in Belfast. The comedian, a gay British Asian, had the crowd in the palm of his hand. He was self-deprecating, flirtatious and hilarious. Then he said, ‘What about the troubles, then? Why do you people call it that? It sounds so twee. It sounds like a spot of bother.’

      Few people laughed. On the one hand, it was understandable that he would say what he said. Indeed, many peace practitioners now shy away from the word ‘troubles’ because of its diminutive syntactical connotations. I think that the comedian didn’t know that in a room of 150 people, it is inevitable that there are people who were troubled by the troubles. Does it matter what you call something if that something is awful? The answer is yes. But the answer is also that words are never the final word.

      ‘Don’t call this war in Ireland the troubles,’ a Republican man once said to me. He said, ‘Some English bastard made that word up, I’m sure.’ ‘Do you know that for a fact?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but you can just tell.’

      Both of these stories are stories, in some way, about English words and English-speaking people on Irish soil in Irish history. The smaller nation always lives in the shadow of the larger. The Irish word for shadow, scáth, is also the word for shelter. We live in the shadow and we live in the shelter of each other.

      One time, I was getting a train from Dublin to Cork for a funeral. My grandfather had died as a result of an illness. I bumped into my friend Tony. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘My granda’s funeral,’ I answered. ‘Sorry for your troubles,’ he said, and he moved on. He said it without thinking. It is what you say. In Irish, there isn’t a specific word for bereavement. In English, the word ‘bereave’ means to deprive of, to despoil, to seize or rob. There isn’t a word for this in the Irish language. Our way of saying bereavement is trioblóid, which, anglicised, is troubled. To be bereaved is to be troubled by grief.

      We say ‘I’m sorry for your troubles’, or ‘Is olc liom do bhris’. We use troubles or breaking for words of bereavement. It describes the experience. We say ‘comhbhrón o chroí’, meaning heart-felt-shared-sadness.

      Is it Northern Ireland? Is it the north of Ireland? Tribe is demarcated and