A poem: Tragic Timing, Belfast 1984

Hello Brian,

Your poem led to me looking on the internet for more information on this terrible incident that brings back ‘the troubles’ so vividly. I’ve put some comments in the text and hope these are helpful. Your poem is a powerful reminder indeed of the futility of such destruction of lives.

Here are my comments --

Tragic Timing, Belfast 1984
i.m. My aunt, Margaret Whyte

Two days after Christmas I arrived

too early and found you unprepared.

You cupped a hand over your mouth

to hide your bared gums and fled the room.
I wondered about ‘bared’ as it sounds angry, and thought maybe ‘bare’ would work?

Beside your false teeth, I planted

a one-pound box of Cadbury's Milk Tray.
I really like the strong contrasting imagery here – your Aunt embarrassed by not having her teeth in, and the box of chocolates left for her to eat. The only word I’m not sure about is ‘planted’ as it distracted me … maybe something like ‘placed’ instead?


Four months after Christmas he arrived

too late. Inside, preparing supper
The ‘too late’ and ‘after Christmas’ works very well because it leads me to assume (wrongly of course) that the ‘he’ is your Aunt’s son or husband or someone dear to her. I very much like the repetition of timings around Christmas in the first and second verses, and the ‘too early’ vs ‘too late’, the former having such a trivial result (no teeth) whilst the latter has a result of total devastation.

for five of your nine children, you heard

an urgent pressing on the buzzer.
I wondered about the word ‘urgent’ – could a buzzer be detected as urgent? – but I think you may have fully intended the strangeness of it.

You set the sausages to one side

and pulled the pan away from the heat.
This presented me with a slightly confused image (it may just be me) ... were the sausages not in the pan? I do like the ordinariness of the sausages frying.


You opened the door, surprised to find

a sports bag bulge on a sill beside

the milk bottles and the fuchsia,
I wouldn’t expect milk bottles to be on the window sill (though maybe they were), and also the fuchsia bush? Again, this may just be me.

and a youthful constable, grim faced –
This being Belfast, would the word ‘Constable’, which sounds quite English, be used for a policeman?

panicked eyes, mouth half opened, white teeth
It seems strange that teeth again are mentioned, or maybe this second reference to teeth is intentional?

framed by trembling lips – ready to speak.


His mission was to give you warning:
I wonder if it’s necessary to ‘tell’ the reader this when the following description is so powerful?

Missus, there's a suspicious package.

His last words lost in an orange flash

and shocking rush of devastating air;
This line is powerful – air is such an innocent thing and yet here I feel the devastation held within it.

both lives and meaning terminating
I like ‘both lives and meaning’ as there is a slight ambiguity about the use of the word ‘both’.

in the futility of the primed full stop.
The ‘futility of the primed full stop’, with the double meaning of ‘primed’, is very powerful and vivid, particularly placed where it is at the very end of the poem – it leaves the reader with a total feeling of life cut off in a moment and the nothingness that is left, and the pointlessness of such an act.



Reorganised version:

His last words lost in an orange flash
and shocking rush of devastating
air; both lives and meaning terminating
in the futility of the primed full stop.
Regarding your reorganised version of the last verse, I prefer the original – I think it seems a shame to separate ‘devastating air’ onto 2 lines.


I hope my comments are useful. Your poem is very interesting and powerful, and took me back to a time when random acts of terrorism were a horrible reality in Belfast.

With very best wishes,

Mary-Anne