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Michael Longley says:

'...It was a friend of mine who was murdered by paramilitaries and I didn't want to identify him, so I gave him the title The Civil Servant.'

'...when somebody walks into a home where there is a smell of cooking and where 成人论坛 Radio is playing music and takes out a gun...they are offending the gods really...they are desecrating civilisation. They are disrupting far more than they probably thought about'.

'...I do believe that poetry is about all of those things that happened to people and war is one of the most huge and one of the most horrible things that happens to millions of people.'

The Civil Servant from Wreaths

He was preparing an Ulster fry for breakfast
When someone walked into the kitchen and shot him:
A bullet entered his mouth and pierced his skull,
The books he had read, the music he could play.

He lay in his dressing gown and pyjamas
While they dusted the dresser for fingerprints
And then shuffled backwards across the garden
With notebooks, cameras and measuring tapes.

They rolled him up like a red carpet and left
Only a bullet hole in the cutlery drawer:
Later his widow took a hammer and chisel
And removed the black keys from his piano.