Connolly Window

With your nosed pressed against a stained glass window

portraying James Connolly tied to a kitchen chair

with a target pinned to his heart like a Poppy Day poppy,

 

you’re either an honoured guest in the Lord Mayor’s parlour

watching smoke clear from the grounds of City Hall

or peering in from outside as the shade of Winnie Carney,

 

fresh from a night of markswomanship and shorthand,

waltzes her ex-Orangeman husband, her red Prod,

on marble floors – and it was far from marble you were reared.