I should be on break, should be done, but instead I am working and working to finish up this report for the Welsh Government on the progress of the new homelessness prevention agenda of the Housing Act 2014 and I just finished the section on vulnerable groups… fucking vulnerable groups. The young people I spoke to sit within this category as though trapped in amber, bureaucratically stripped of the fierce tragedies of their angry, lost, scared, funny, resigned presences vibrating with life sometimes falling in tears, sometimes erupting in a torrent of abuse on the phone. They survive streets and misery and old wounds and abuse with alcohol and drug medleys, and more and more with mamba, ‘legal highs’, spice. These kids are not easy, but they are ours and we are letting them die.

I read this poem this morning, and it felt like a Christmas gift. One among many, for Paula Meehan’s Painting Rain must be one of the best poetry collections I’ve ever read. A gift for me and for them. For all those who loved them, tried to save them. A prayer to whisper beside every Christmas tree.

Prayer for the Children of Longing

A poem commissioned by the community of Dublin’s north inner city for the lighting of the Christmas tree in Buckingham Street, to remember their children who died from drug use.

Great tree from the far northern forest
Still rich with the sap of the forest
Here at the heart of winter
Here at the heart of the city

Grant us the clarity of ice
The comfort of snow
The cool memory of trees
Grant us the forest’s silence
The snow’s breathless quiet

For one moment to freeze
The scream, the siren, the knock on the door
The needle in its track
The knife in the back

In that silence let us hear
The song of the children of longing
In that silence let us catch
The breath of the children of longing

The echo of their voices through the city streets
The streets that defeated them
That brought them to their knees
The streets that couldn’t shelter them
That spellbound them in alleyways
The streets that blew their minds
That led them astray, out of reach of our saving
The streets that gave them visions and dreams
That promised them everything
That delivered nothing
The streets that broke their backs
The streets we brought them home to

Let their names be the wind through the branches
Let their names be the song of the river
Let their names be the holiest prayers

Under the starlight, under the moonlight
In the light of this tree

Here at the heart of winter
Here at the heart of the city