Colin Dardis - Issue 34

Colin Dardis is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently with the lakes (above/ground press, 2023) and What We Look Like in the Future (Red Wolf Editions, 2023). A neurodivergent poet, editor and sound artist, his work has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and USA. Colin is co-host of the long-running open mic night, Purely Poetry, held in the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, and editor of the poetry blog, Poem Alone.

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I Have Looked For Inspiration

I have looked for inspiration 

in all these streets:

some now forgotten by man, 

only recalled by the dust and the dead; 

others set on the possibility 

of the here and the now. 

I have looked for the unmarked grave 

and stood at the memorials,

touched shoulders with both

the grieving and the fallen. 

I have observed the minute’s silence 

and cried out in celebration

when the guns were laid down. 

I have walked the roads of Omagh,

of Kingsmill, Greysteel and Enniskillen, 

tramped the dirt down in Belfast,

Derry, Londonderry, Maiden City, 

and in everywhere, found a future

that longs to be free of its past. 

I have looked to the faces of strangers 

claiming one side of the road their own,

then shook hands with those brave enough 

to cross over and defy a generation’s fear, 

to age together and remove 

the mote from each other’s eye, 

free to weep and see again 

in the new light of forgiveness. 

I have seen my people be held back 

by the talons of identity,

by labels of name and school and townland 

that they could not control, 

then be embraced by those 

who dared not to care,

who only want to know the person 

and not the percentage they fall within. 

I have looked over the peace walls 

and found the same families

in the same houses, 

too busy surviving 

to worry about who is on the other side. 

I have seen wastelands reclaimed as skate parks,

a sunken ship raised up and made into a conqueror, 

the slogans of hate painted over by artists 

who only want to tell you how great it is 

to be here and alive today. 

We have been measured by kerbstone 

and telegraph pole for too long now,

pinpoints in our great country of distance, 

where a land can be void of landmark, 

where there is uncaged air, open billows of peace, 

where words may be sifted and stored 

and history transformed 

in the furnace of tolerance and compassion 

to award the outsider 

with a tale worth retelling.