Like many others in Northern Ireland this past week I've been thinking about events of Good Friday 1998, last Wednesday, partly in the light of the other political bombshell delivered on Good Friday this year. Last year there were many opportunities for wistful looking back, self-congratulations and international talking-shops. But the lack of an assembly at that point demonstrated the frustrations of the previous quarter century. As I said this time last year, the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, was NOT a settlement, as as illustrated by its bifurcated name. Rather it was a way marker on a journey that too many have been reluctant to take further. At that point so many things remained unresolved/agreed/settled, not least policing, paramilitary weapons and activity, victims and "The past" - not to mention bread and butter issues such as education, health, housing and others, all of which are tainted by our divisions.
Against that background O wrote this, and one year further on, with an Executive in place, it still applies:
“It is finished!”
But no, it had only just begun.
Politicians and religious leaders
may have sighed with relief
When the deed was done,
But the story was far from over
So much remained unresolved
We can at least agree on that.
Eventually the international visitors
Went back home, with their own
Accounts of what went on:
Good news of peace on earth.
The world powers deliberately washed
Their hands of ongoing responsibility,
Leaving the blood to fall upon us
And upon our unborn children.
Those who stood outside
The seat of power for fear
Of being sullied by the process,
Still stand outside, yet dictate
What can and cannot happen.
Men (and women) of violence
Are set at liberty, while innocent
Victims remain nailed to their crosses.
For how many more quarter centuries
Will we re-enact with passion
The drama of those days?
Too many of the original actors
Have departed the stage,
Their understudies merely echoing
Words without having walked
The Via Dolorosa in preparation.
It is beyond time for the second act;
To cast off the grave clothes
Of the bloody past, and
Roll away the sizeable stones
To allow grieving women (and men)
To lead the rest of us,
Cowering behind locked doors,
Into the possibility of new life.
Comments