But you see, it’s not me
It’s not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs
And their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What’s in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh

Dolores O’ Riordan died today at the young age of 46.

I was 13 years old when Zombie was released, a song written to highlight the sheer brutality of actions by both sides during the war known by a ludicrously gentle name: The Troubles.

The child in the opening lyric references the death of of 2 children during the 1993 Warrington bomb attacks conducted by the Provisional IRA, a splinter group who claimed to fight for people who persistently disowned them. It’s not me, it’s not my family.

The bombing was followed by the UDA execution of six Catholics in Northern Ireland just 5 days later, and collectively these events felt like a type of last straw to a conflict spanning decades.

Zombie was written and released along with a haunting video the following year. It changed things. It went global. It became the anthem of a generation who offered terrorist groups no support. No moral high ground. No one (who mattered) condoned, defended, explained, or justified their actions any longer. No one wanted this, no one wanted them.

The road to peace from that point onwards was anything but smooth. Worse events were to follow either side of temporary ceasefires. But it got there.

And every time I hear the horrible phrases like“The Troubles”, “Provisional IRA”, “UDA” or any of their ilk my mind immediately jumps to a 23 year old Limerick woman who put pen to paper to say that enough is fucking enough.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.
May she rest in peace

Zombie was originally published in Des Traynor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A poem by Seamus Heaney about the death of his younger brother Christropher

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were ‘sorry for my trouble,’
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Mid Term Break was originally published in Des Traynor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When we won the league for the first time in 1993 I didn’t want the team to slacken off. That thought appalled me. I was determined to keep advancing. To strengthen our hold on power.

I told that 1993 side that some people, when they have a holiday, just want to go to Saltcoats, a small town twenty-five miles along the coast from Glasgow.

Some people don’t even want to do that. They’re happy to stay at home or watch the birds and the ducks float by in the park.

And some want to go to the fucking moon.

It’s all about ambition.

Alex Ferguson: On ambition was originally published in Des Traynor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At the end of this game you’ll be just six feet away from the European Cup, but you won’t be able to touch it, of course.

And I want you to think about that fact that you’ll have been so close to it and for many of you this will be the closest you’ll ever get.

And you will hate that thought for the rest of your lives.

So just make sure you don’t lose.

Don’t you fucking dare come back in here without giving your all.

Alex Ferguson, 1999 was originally published in Des Traynor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”

Raymond Carver died of lung cancer in 1988, at the young age of 50. “Late fragment” was his last piece, written during the final stages of his illness. I love its simplicity and it’s sense of accomplishment in the face of mortality. The triumph of love and the human spirit.

Late fragment was originally published in Des Traynor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.