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Another Time, Another Place
Arkaig
Distant Thunder
Farewell to Six Loved Ones
Father
For Anke
Instantaneous
Metamorphosis
Naked Autumn
Oceanus 
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Requiem for an Ulsterman
Solitude in A
West Church, Bangor

Northern Ireland

A Child of the Troubles
Discovery of St Anne's
Donegal Pass
For Love in a Lost Place
Lamb's Conduit
Red
These are the Days
Troubled Times
Coming to Terms

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For Love In A Lost Place

Fire spits out in dark alleys, drumlins play host to madmens’ machinations;
Half a lifetime or more of perceived intifada
And counter-rebellion - our inheritance the legacy
Of two pasts, maybe three,
Of murder, hate, mistrust, ignorance.
Such is the terrible beauty of this place.

Aping the world they go on; talk of justification,
The bravery of the quick and the dead.
Circles of blind hate spreading out
From one community to the next.
Blocks, cars, handbags - people!
Disguise the real battle.

As a country we would be flooded if this land could cry,
Witness to so much injustice and pain.
Daddy, I love you very much; forgiveness greater than the evil of the deed.
The warmth of this people will one day conquer hate;
Pain is great, innocence powerfully purer,
For a bad man has shot my daddy dead.

(C) Philip Ralph Johnston
12 November 1991

---

"Daddy, I love you very much" : The words of Marie Wilson, a young nurse, as she lay dying, clasping the hand of her father, both buried under the rubble of a wall blown up by the IRA at the War Memorial, Belmore Street, Enniskillen,  on Remembrance Sunday 1987. Her father’s only words were those of grief and sorrow; his outspoken foregiveness for the dreadful dead committed by men of violence speaking more powerfully than any action born of hatred or bitternesss ever could.

The outrage this act prosecuted in an otherwise quiet community led to the establishment of Choose Life, an ecumenical, cross-community, peaceful, apolitical organisation to foster and encourage contact between schools, churches and other organisations in the area, and across the Province. The net effect has been positive, constructive dialogue and community consolidation, born out of death; a golden phoenix rising from the rubble.

A blood-spattered young boy stands looking out at the fresh corpse of his father, a worker in County Tyrone in the west of the Prvince. Calmly he telephones his grandmother, his fathers mother, and speaks. "Granny, please come .. for a bad man has shot my daddy dead." So innocent a bloody baptism into the violence which crawls around this land, malignant as cancer, poisoning peace, prosperity and happiness.