He must have cut it out carefully from the Longford Leader

Folded it three times and put it into the inside pocket of the jacket,

a good jacket from Saville Row.

Folded and refolded, it is a dream of a life he could have had,

All the more impossible because he knows full well

He could more easily find a place in central Bangladesh

Than go home now to Ballinalee.

If he did return, to the graveyard maybe, to Bully's Acre,

The headstone there will be blank and clean

He will not take years of London memories,

Chance meetings, friends lost and found, clothes gathered and worn

over forty years.

If he did return there he will arrive, curiously pure,

Dead or alive - in a coffin or a hire car

The intervening years demeaned and forgotten.

Only this place matters here, those who leave are frozen in pods

In a silo somewhere outside Granard.

If he did return he will leave more than this jacket and this little folded star

Because he knows the world is too cruel for Ballinalee,

And no place else protects itself so well.