Towards An Improved Sense Of Resignation

I left England behind when I started to grow up.
Every so often I used to look back, well beyond
who I used to be, and the more often I looked
the more 'the old country' shrank to nothing.
The past appeared as if it were a false memory
of television shows watched which I could remember
when prompted, but any bonds I attempted to form
through shared activities foundered in circumstances
that outwardly changed so rapidly that no relationship
ever held, or stuck to me, in the way I hoped it would.

It was like life was meant to be both oversold
and highly discouraging. Between the overselling
and the quiet wish to die the conflict was tough.

Now I live in 'backward' Northern Ireland,
and I 'get' the politics here, because late in life
I live deep in the country, and from a distance
I appreciate now how the peace walls in Belfast
protect vital false fronts and one-sided histories
when the alternative would be much worse.

These walls are like the television of my youth,
they stop people who have no real history
or character of their own, in opposition or together,
from dissapearing for having no identity atall.

So that is is why nothing happens here
though a more thorough nothingness
would be much more truthful,
but would not attract as many tourists.