The blood of Ireland flows again

The blood of Ireland flows again The dead already dead Stand ghastly in their spectral ranks We are her sons, they said. A boy, severely burnt, his clothes Torn off, his body red, Runs screaming up the Belfast street I am her son, he said.

King Billy strides the empty town Where Orangemen have bled Smiles at each moon-staring corpse They are my sons, he said. While Pearse and Connolly display The wounds where British lead Ripped exits for their hard bright souls They are our sons, they said. The British soldier aims his gun At an Irishman’s head, Thinks of dead friends and pulls the trigger, Son of a bitch, he said. Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan, Too long on bullets fed, Though beautiful, is sad, forlorn, They are my sons, she said. The Protestant and Catholic boys Lie side by side, now dead, And speak to each other in the dark, We’re both her sons, they said.

While Faulkner strikes a pose and smiles The shutter’s clicked by Ted; Internment without trial is all That’s left for us, he said. When Cronus ate his children And ripped each thinking head From bleeding mutilated trunk They were his sons, he said.

BLOODY SUNDAY

They lie tonight in the hospitals of Londonderry, Frozen, as if by the weather, into positions of death. The night is cold. The dead winter stinks of decay. Icicles drop from taps, that had been living water. Nature mirrors man. Something made their blood freeze And killed them. Something formed stalactites in the souls Of their killers. Ice splinters dance in congealed veins, Form red chains of stars, dead molecules forcing an exit. Winter has set in. Humanity is hibernating. Pipes burst in the cold. The ink has frozen in my belly.