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Flitting
Like no straitjacket or chains or Black Maria
Could ever bring Houdini to heel
Or keep him penned in for all that long,
So Sweeney, king of escape artists and identity switchers
In flight from his home in Dalnaria –
Look up there, tweeters and twitchers,
Wood-lovers and tree-huggers – to the heavens above
Nutt’s Corner and Aldergrove,
Going off course over the Sperrins and Lough Foyle
And the shifting tightrope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede
Like your man in
The Shaughraun of Carnteel
Or the sparrow flitting through the rafters in the great hall
with long fires described by Venerable Bede
And veering off over the Straits of Moyle
Up to the Holy Loch and Loch Long.