Lizz Murphy - Poem 193: Lilt xi. Ghosts of the Twelfth

LILT xi.

GHOSTS OF THE TWELFTH*

1962

She only ever said it once:

Anyway what are you doin playin with Catholics!

My new friend (Catholic) came with me to see the Parades

It was her first time and she thought they were brilliant too

Hundreds of bands flutes whistles drums bagpipes

The big lambeg drums at the front and the drummers’ leopard skins

The band leaders tossing their staffs high in the air or

twirling around their bodies They’d practised all year

In between the bands the Orangemen from each Lodge in their

bowler hats and white gloves, orange sashes around their necks

Neither of us knew the politics

2011

with thanks to Eílish

I’m in the Linen Hall Library in the centre of Belfast

with a new friend (Catholic) talking about poetry

when I hear the whistles and drums

I want to run into the street like when we were children

and the bands were practising their marching and passing

the hat for pennies We both go to the window and look

down into the street You know I used to go to the Parades

she says - the bands aren’t what they used to be

She tells me about the teenager who says he has

a job of sorts - he’s in a band – ‘ghost whistler’

No wonder they sound a bit thin

2016

Searching through a Belfast history website

my husband (Catholic) finds a photo of Hutchinson Street

where Granny and Granda lived There is a crowd of men

and some on a platform wearing Orange Order sashes

and another standing to the side above the crowd

I look hard I can’t be sure but his hair seems dark enough wavy

enough  his eyes shadowy – thinness or the onset of the illness

that will take him in just a few years I knew he was an Orangeman

I remember him rubbing his face and saying he should’ve been marching 

My father looked worried but he always did even when he was laughing

Hutchinson Street is gone now and we can’t find that photo online again

*The Twelfth - the biggest Orange Order celebration of the Battle of the Boyne is held on July 12. 

More info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Order

A practice march photographed from the Linen Hall Library café