Dear Future

The bodies have been buried. There was no retaliation. The soldiers have been withdrawn from the streets of Belfast but on every corner the ghosts of the dead remain stranded until their features fade with memory. The odd British army helicopter, of course, still carries out surveillance. The border is still patrolled. Some militants, stranded with the ghosts of comrades, embittered or hurt too much, still imagine circumstances where the old struggle can be replicated. Some unionists, bitter, intransigent, also hurt, recalling their dead, still indulge in the dream of stopping the clock, or better still, turning it back.