'The IRA are playing hard ball.' Unionist spokesman

As if they'd play soft ball
as if they wouldn't hit something
hard and rigid like a bat or wall
that clocks back a dry sound - it stings
your ears and is foreclosed and final
like a door banged shut a knocked nail
or deadlocked rhyme like done and gun
- though for some reason I halved it
by writing - slip of the pen - gone
- and copying it out did the same again
as if I was trying to lift that bat
against a soggy almost shapeless ball
that rises now - maybe - like a child's song
over the flat playground railings