A Poem by Tim Scott

A Pipistrelle Colony in Derry/Londonderry

Disturbed by the echoes
of voices in their bridge arch, they quiver like
black tongues and hiss like
fuses. Furious
whisperers who recoil from English words, they
are ghosts of the famine, the civil war, partition.

The last to know peace, they have hung
themselves in darkness, wrapping
tattered shawls round spindle bones. Now I,
in my unsightedness, have put this in their mouths.

Tim Scott grew up in Northern Ireland and now lives in Walthamstow. He won the 2021/22 Magma Editors’ Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 Aesthetica Prize. His work has appeared in Magma, Shearsman, and Wild Court.