Beautiful shinny black hair

that laced her smiling face

and took young men’s breath away, who recognised

poetry in motion.

It gave an Italian look to one so beautiful when she sung

and graced life’s stage;

like a princess posing upon a throne.

 

The night out and lift home seemed normal.

She carried her own music

created for the hearts willing to listen and

ready to re-create at the drop of a hat

until

everything stopped with a routine roadblock

as Ulster

(conceived with the spilling of innocent blood)

became the dirtiest word uttered by laughing men with drink in their blood

and blood in their stare;

beautiful shinny black hair now covered her face

 hanging like a curtain, hiding the six bullet holes

in her head.

Rosemary Mc Cartney and her friend Patrick O Neill were taken from a taxi on the night of July 1972 and brought to a club in the Shankill Road by members of the UDA/UFF they were interrogated because they were Catholics and brought to a spot in Forthriver Drive North Belfast and murdered.