Derek Mahon, speaking of his arrival in Dublin in 1960 to attend Trinity College, said of the place he was born: “I had rumbled Belfast for the bigoted corrupt dump that it was and I was delighted to get out of it.”
That wasn’t the whole story, of course. Eight years later in the poem Spring in Belfast he reveals more about his feeling for the city that had formed him. This is its closing stanza:
One part of my mind must learn to know its place.
The things that happen in the kitchen houses
And echoing back streets of this desperate city
Should engage more than my casual interest,
Exact more interest than my casual pity.
