GIPSIES I have watched the dark police rocking your caravans to wreck the crockery and wry thoughts of peace you keep there on waste ground beside motorways where the snow lies late (all this on television) and am ashamed; fed, clothed, housed and shamed. You might be interested to hear, though, that on stormy nights our strong, double glazing groans with foreknowledge of death, the fridge with a great wound, and not surprised to know the fate you have so long endured is ours also. The cars are piling up. I listen to the wind and file receipts; the heap of scrap metal in my garden grows daily. -- Derek Mahon (born Belfast 1941)