I. I'm writing just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of 'views
On the Irish thing'. I'm back in winter
Quarters where bad news is no longer news,
Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analyses
Of politicians and newspapermen
Who've scribbled down the long campaign from gas And protest to gelignite and Sten,

Who proved upon their pulses 'escalate',
'Backlash' and 'crack down', 'the provisional wing', 'Polarization' and 'long-standing hate'.
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,

Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours
On the high wires of first wireless reports,
Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavours
Of those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts:

'Oh, it's disgraceful, surely, I agree.'
'Where's it going to end?' 'It's getting worse.' 'They're murderers.' 'Internment, understandably ...' The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse.

III.
"Religion's never mentioned here", of course.
"You know them by their eyes," and hold your tongue. "One side's as bad as the other," never worse.
Christ, it's near time that some small leak was sprung

In the great dykes the Dutchman made
To dam the dangerous tide that followed Seamus.
Yet for all this art and sedentary trade
I am incapable. The famous

Northern reticence, the tight gag of place
And times: yes, yes. Of the "wee six" I sing
Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.

Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us: Manoeuvrings to find out name and school,
Subtle discrimination by addresses
With hardly an exception to the rule

That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod
And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.
O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks, Where half of us, as in a wooden horse
Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

IV.
This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees

Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground And it was déjà-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.

Is there a life before death? That's chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup,
We hug our little destiny again.

https://www.lionchess.co.uk/Chess-P...

Aye. It was a close finish! Well done to you.

Carlsen is clearly a superman at rapid chess. 3-0 is astounding.

It is quite striking how often this happens. Karjakin, too, has not performed particularly well since the 2016 match, compared to his results in the years preceding that match.

There won't be many matches where there is only a 2 point Elo difference between the players.

There were no Pertroffs, no Berlins... There were Sicilians-a-go-go which can never be bad. There was also a very high move-average.

Both players missed wins in the first 12 games: that's chess. These guys are human.

IMO, Carlsen had the better of almost every classical game, and totally deserved to win.

In the end, if a disinterested observer was asked, "Who was the best chess player out of these two," there would only be one possible answer.

I am puzzled that Caruana speaks English with a European accent. I mean, he was born and brought up in Brooklyn so surely he should sound like the yank that he is.

Sadly, the 12 draws made chess look a bit stupid. Future matches should be:

<16 games, 40 moves in 100 minutes, then 15 minutes plus 5 seconds for the remaining moves>.

<offramp: ...In 1985 the Texas Street/Highways Interstate Tidying Service collected 286,994,034 items of "non-scheduled human-interfaced trash" from the streets of Texas.

I noticed you did not take my offer:

<This is Karpov whom Nigel Short beat on the way to becoming challenger for the World Championship crown, yes?>

Sometimes people use the opposite construction with the same meaning:

<This is Karpov whom Nigel Short beat on the way to becoming challenger for the World Championship crown, no?>

Why do people use this weird Bond-villain construction?

It wastes time, no?

There is a better way of writing it, yes?

Yes.

<Is this the Karpov whom Nigel Short beat on the way to becoming challenger for the World Championship crown?>

How simple is that? And you don't sound like an idiot European who learnt English in a phone box.