Green lights of hope in windows burn,
As folk fight to save their homes,
From faceless corporations and banks,
Not conquering nations, kings on thrones.
We do not see the Peelers there
They stand not by the Union Jack
But the Gardai take their place…
The Eviction Squads are back.
For the sake of mere profit
They show no mercy, do not r [...]
Posts tagged Ireland
Green Lights of Hope in Windows Burn
Green lights of hope in windows burn,
As folk fight to save their homes,
From faceless corporations and banks,
Not conquering nations, kings on thrones.
We do not see the Peelers there
They stand not by the Union Jack
But the Gardai take their place…
The Eviction Squads are back.
For the sake of mere profit
They show no mercy, do not r [...]
Bringing In the Wasted Harvest
Threshing day in Ireland
Ireland has been wasteful as a state of her resources, the most valuable of which is her young people, which she on their coming of age have fled to other nations to make their living, having non at home due to the economic crises caused by the collapse of the property and banking sectors.
Satire on “The Gather [...]
It Foils Their Art
It foils their art the words to speak
Or to comprehend it to seek
To appear cultured and chic
All today strive
And a tongue long past its peak
Struggles to survive.
Aye, from a time before today
When men cast not their traditions away
And had little against each other to say
And had not yet the English tongue perfect
They spoke proud in their [...]
A Horse Is a Horse
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Christ Was A Slovakian (Deceased)
On the day Ireland beat Slovakia 1-0 at soccer, Irish Mail on Sunday journalist Paul Palmer found that his next door neighbour, a Slovak national he never met, was murdered in his flat.
He goes on to lament Ireland has changed, how foreigners don’t integrate and live like the Irish, not taking into account that this green and pleasant land of [...]
The Shepherd, the Wolf, The Ewe, and ...
This story, while a moral tale in its own right, is based on the tragic tale of Savita Halappanavar, the woman who died this week in UCG Hospital in Galway Ireland, after she needed her baby removed from her womb at 17 weeks gestation to save her life. Teh doctor, being pro-life and wanting to stay within the law, said not until the baby die [...]
The Long Acre
A trains stopped, a dead cow on the trackway
And children crying herding more
And I woken from my reverie
I enjoyed while traveling before
The train stopped at the accident in Preševo
As we all peered out to see
The cause – thank God only a cow is dead
Said the people next to me
And as I watched them get smaller in the distance
Children [...]
Telegram Ignored
Next of kin – sisters name given:
Duty done, family contacted
Telegram ignored – the shame, the shame
As if kinship itself retracted.
But so things were in those times
And so he lies in an unknown spot
The shame of his uniform now has passed
His grave unknown, he’s forgotten not.
The tragic end of an Irish soldier of fortune [...]
The Free State Flag From a Yacht Mast...
The next and perhaps the most moving scene of the day was the
hoisting of the Tricolour on the castle, which was not without
its touch of humour. When Gen. MacEoin and his staff arrived to
unfurl the flag it was discovered that there was no flag-staff.However, G.V. Simmons, the local photographer, contributed in
his way to the historic occasi [...]
Let Death for You Have No Fear
Read the words of the poem >>>
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We Are But Passing Through
History, crumbles, before our eyes
And walking past, we wonder not
Someday, for all that we are
We too, like those who here lived, will be forgot…
These walls, they are but stone walls
And as the Lord upon his throne
Who once ruled here, he died
So shall we, being but skin and bone
And the stone buildings great we build
So that known lo [...]
Dreams of De Valera
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King Billy and The Pope
The touring Orangemen in Stormont,
To see the picture came,
The victor of the Boyne,
Who banished Popery to shame,
But when they came upon it,
The asked how could it be:
For the pope blessing King Billy
Was what they all could see.
An outrage and an insult:
With this they could not cope,
An unholy alliance
Of King Billy and the Pope,
And so [...]
A Land Worth Fighting For
“This is a land worth fighting for”
William of Orange – attrib.
“I fought to liberate the Protestants,
not oppress the Catholics”
William of Orange
A land worth fighting for, plains of Royal Meath
A kingdom, no, three, on his white steed
With Dutch Dane and German as he did need
He crossed Boyne’s narrow w [...]
OCCUPY
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On Reading Poems of the Ulster Weaver...
I, the scholar knowledge saught
I had my imagination caught
By rhymes from lives that were wrought
From poverty
And by those who never thought
Things better should be.
Each man took life as it came
Glad of days bad and good the same
Some men were wild and more were tame
None their work would shirk
Of their little schooling they had no shame
L [...]
Poem Written in a Park in Barna
“It is good, this recession… so much is possible… there is such a positive vibe going on”
- two women overheard talking at the Spanish Arch in Galway
Marsh Park at Barna in County Galway, Ireland
A glass is half full if you see it that way
Everything is as good as you want it to be
It depends how you look at the things [...]
Life to His Kind Was a Game of Chance
Tom Reilly, an Irish Soldier of Fortune
Adventures sake
Brought the young sons of Erin
Into uniform
Thoughts of great glory
Among shot and shell in hell
Of the battlefield
To return to home
To kisses of loved ones
And relieved mothers
As hero’s of old
Of whom they heard as children
At their mothers knee.
It was not to be
So many fell wo [...]
Blog – Poets for Change –...
Poets for Change
Advanced plan for the 100,000 Poets for Change event are in the pipeworks, with a new video for the festival, a reading event or two from the Tullamore Rhymers Club, and prehaps an online broadcast being brought into the works.
Poetry Bus 4
“The Poetry Bus is a magazine of the people, by the people, for the people. It [...]
Turned Back from Leinster House
I wished to visit parliament
Its workings for to see
An Irishman, to tour like an American
But it was denied to me.
By an otherwise gorgeous ban-Garda
Who said that a TD
Had to sponsor those who tour
So sponsored Id have to be.
I thought of this as crazy
And as I went away
I knew then what they think of us
Who for all this with our taxes pay. [...]
Loudest Voices Cover Up Much
We must pay for everything
From our homes, to our loaf of bread
Some folk pay for somethings
And that they are great it is said
Some folk pay for nothing
And because of that the who pay for little cry
And we join in its good craic and correct
Are our reasons why.
Some of them wear pink shirts
Pink socialists to the bone
Some of them drive cem [...]
When the Potatoes Did Not Grow
When the potatoes from the blight they did not grow
And the leaves they wilted and turned black upon the stem
And the growing tubers beneath the earth they shriveled
Hunger awaited the people who depended on them.
To pay the rent for homes they gave away their crops
Soldiers in uniforms guarded the barns that held the grain
Ships at the docks [...]
When They Stood There For That Photo
Photo of the Carty family of Aughagreagh, taken by Sean Mac Eoin circa 1915
When they stood there for that photo
Before my father was even born then
Who is not but in a photo a face:
Did those women and men
Wonder at the world to come
And ponder the coming times of change
Though they did not do this I think
For their own times were as strange [...]
Why the Irish Dont Rise Up As They Di...
Others look, quietly wonder
A land of rebels who don’t rebel
So many leaders, so many people
Why are folk so quiet, take it so well?
Is it the Church that cowes the people
Tells them to rebel is wrong
That great opiate of the masses
Who we though in this land no longer strong?
Why not reject this capitalism
As we overthrew the British y [...]
The M3 Developer Meets the Leprechaun...
The M3 morotway was literally bulldozed through and is now open. The amount of damage to the site is beyond commercial valueing. This is a comedy verse, written during the construction phase.
Sitting under the tree, he was fixing shoes
I could not believe what I did see, as I was drinking booze
But it was no the drink no way, of that I am sur [...]
No Dockers Here Now Load Their Boats
The new Docklands area of Dublin. Photo Tomás Ó Cárthaigh (c)2010
No dockers here now load their boats
And curse and laugh, lewd stories tell
Others do… more clipped their accents
And they have more money as well
There are jobs for all here all right
But they are not for dockers sons
No… but for sons of solicitors and doctors
And [...]
Think
To think, it is freedom
To think you have freedom to think…
Some think they need freedom, forget
That those who had that system were told what to think
And if they had a thought of their own
They were sent to rethink what they thought
So they thought what they ought
As decreed by those who controlled the freedom to think what they decre [...]
Snakes All Around Us
Readers of these pages from Ireland will be familiar with Fr Brian D’Arcy’s “A Little Bit of Religion” column in the Sunday Word, an Irish Sunday newspaper.
In the October 1 2006 edition, Fr Brian quotes a tale told by Native American actor Iron Eyes Cody.
While he tells it to warn of the dangers of drink and drugs, [...]
May We Never Have A Love For or Want ...
May never for the humble turnips
We have a need or love
For neither is good for man
For the former he will shove
Away a fellow starving man
In times of woe and hunger
Like a bully in the family
That dominates the younger.
And for the latter, may we not have
To plant them have disdain
For food for sheep is good for man
Even though the taste i [...]
