This poem is from the forthcoming Privacy Policy: The Poetics of Surveillance (Black Ocean), edited by Andrew Ridker.
Rita Duffy: Watchtower 2
1
From here it looks as if the whole country is spread under a camouflage tarp
rolled out by successive British garrisons
stationed in Crossmaglen. As teenagers we worked our way through Iosagan
Agus Sgealta Eile while selling shocks and struts
from a tumbledown garage. Our vision of Four Green Fields shrinks to the olive drab
the Brits throw over everything. This must be their version of a tour d’horizon,
their scanners scanning our hillsides while we still try to scan
a verse by Padraig Pearse. One advantage of a farm that, as they say, bestrides
the border is how industrial diesel
dyed with a green dye ferries itself from the South into the North
by force of gravity alone. The fact that laundered diesel’s then worth
twice at much at the pump supports the usual
tendencies of the punters to misjudge
our motives and see us as common criminals. Like seeing smoke in a paint smudge.
2
One of our neighbors, interned for selling An Phoblacht, learned we’re not the first tribe
to have been put down or the first to have risen
against our oppressors. That’s why we’ve always sided with the Redskin
and the Palestinian. It must be because steroids
are legal in the North but not the South the Brits like to eavesdrop
on our comings and goings. As for kerosene,
the fact that it’s cheaper in the North is enough to sicken
our happiness. That and the upstarts
who try to horn in on our operation. We’re in a constant tussle
with these Seoinins-come-lately, a constant back and forth
on the business of smuggling fuel. We run it through cat litter or fuller’s earth
to absolve it of the dye. By far the biggest hassle
is trying to get rid of the green sludge
left over from the process. It infiltrates our clothes. It’s impossible to budge.
