~None of them came home~

shiv

The titanic was going down on TV
At ten past three
When a little town blew its way onto the map
Of terrorism and infamy

Women and children
The main casualties
Buying back-to-school supplies
On a busy, sun-drenched Saturday

There was the usual bomb threat
Routine evacuation carried out
Hundreds of innocents hustled
By the police into a death trap
Unwittingly

The red Cavalier abandoned
To blast progress back 30 years
The “Cause” contained in the carnage
Found in severed limbs lying across the street

500 pounds of homemade explosives
A timer packed inside a child’s lunchbox

Clothes torn right off
Bodies turned inside out
Washed down the street by a broken watermain

The evidence of Irish paramilitary power
For all the world's media outlets to see
Dining in Dunnes alongside the townspeople
Experiencing excessive intrusion into private grief

The soldiers back in full force
patrolling
29 less people
Of both religious ethnicities

A cross-community carnival blotted out
By a battlefield of blood
A British Army base
A makeshift morgue

Lists of the injured and dead
Pinned up in the local leisure centre
Amidst emergency counselling sessions
And political photo opportunities

A garden of remembrance
A stalled peace process
And anonymous weekly hoaxes
Just some of the remnants