Control Zone

Who recalls the cringing silence

Of a town centre?

The cowed shops

Already much wounded
Blind with plywood cataracts

Desperate measures

Posted in black and yellow

Forbade cars to be empty

 - Pedestrian logic, these days -

Because one in a hundred

Would be far too low on its axles

For any innocent purpose.

A freight of kinetic badness

Filling the boot

Mixed with care

In some Leitrim hayshed
Might consequently need
To be abandoned
Somewhere 'softer'

The course of life and death

Made all the more perverse

By the bombs
That never went off.