The Customers

Finally,
summer’s here,
and
we’re enjoying a
wee drink
in this bar.
A mix of us, from
both
sides of the fence.
Unusual for these
troubled times
but it works
for us.
The balmy moon glows
in our glasses,
when the
yellow headed
men
invade the bar and
call out for us to
separate
by faith.
Our drinks stay
frozen
at our lips;
this will be
death
for some of us;
and for what crime?
Enjoying
peaceful
interludes
together.

Fifty-year-old Catholic civilian, forty-five-year-old Catholic civilian, forty-seven-year-old Protestant civilian, fifty-three-year-old Protestant civilian and fifty-nine-year-old Catholic civilian, shot dead during a gun attack on a bar in Belfast by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in retaliation for a Provisional IRA (PIRA) bomb attack on another bar on the same day, in which two Protestant civilians were killed.