In a Clondalkin Supermarket Car Park

Screw all self-appointed martyrs, Ignore their beguiling monuments: Screw any ghosts with the neck To impose upon their descendants The mortgage of any emotive debt, Any cloying duty of remembrance That turns the past into an excuse To hold us to ransom in the present. Let the weight of history seem as light As a party balloon slipping from the grasp Of a child distracted in a crowded car park. Let it oat above cars blocking exit lanes Until the tribal braves become blue specks, So indistinct amid a skyline of cranes That they cannot be hijacked from the grave To be tools men use to justify or condemn. The child watches her balloon disappear, She does not stamp her feet or simper; She lets the past go, being too enthralled By all the possible futures that await her. - Dermot Bolger

The Clondalkin Suite, a sequence of poems by Dermot Bolger, from part of his work in progress entitled County Lives. Commissioned by South Dublin County Council through In Context 3 and funded under the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Governments Per Cent for Art Scheme, The Clondalkin Suite is being displayed across Clondalkin. Their texts can be downloaded at http://incontext.southdublin.ie/ where comments may also be left for the author. Between the January 1st and March 30th 2008, people who live or work in South Dublin County are invited to submit to the author, via this website, up to three original poems that reect some aspect of their lives within the county. In September 2008, the full text of County Lives will be published, consisting of Dermot Bolgers original sequence interlinked with a representative cross section of submitted poems by other authors. Designed and produced by Yellowstone Communications Design 670 4200.