Children's Games

Looking out across the playground,
tar-mac black with railings
sharp as soldiers’ spikes,

I see the children caught like leaves
amongst the stirring winter here,
falling, tumbling, shrieking, frightened,
clinging to each other as they fall-

at times like these in Belfast
I would count the children dead from war;
when the street moved and they fell,
their broken bits of body tumbling, floating

in a soldier’s deepening eye.