Editor’s note: this piece was originally published on 28 December 2017, when Michael Longley won the PEN Pinter Prize. It was republished on 23 January after the news that Michael died on 22 January 2025 at the age of 85.
In August 1969, Patrick Rooney, a nine-year-old boy, was struck by a tracer-bullet fired by the RUC as he lay in bed in the Divis Flats in the Falls Road district of Belfast. He was the first child to be killed during the Troubles. In helpless response I wrote “Kindertotenlieder” (“Songs for Dead Children”, its title borrowed from Mahler’s great song cycle:
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