Читать книгу Sorry For Your Troubles - Pádraig Ó Tuama   - Страница 14

h u n g e r s t r i k e r s

And there was banging on the bins that night

and many frightened people woke

and noted down the hour.

The clock of hunger-strikers dead is not ignored

with ease

and ‘please, God, please keep loved ones safe’

was then

repeated round and round and round

like rosaries told upon a bead,

or shoes upon the ground of orange walking.

The five demands, the five-year plan

that saw a blanket round a man,

the dirty protest, Thatcher stance,

that gave a new and startling glance

at just how deep a people’s fury goes.

And God knows each single mother’s son

was sick of hunger,

all those younger faces became stripped and old

eyes shrunk back and foreheads cold & bold

with skin that’s limp and paper thin,

barely separating blood and bone from stone.

And some did say ‘enough is now enough’

and others said that ‘never, never, never will a

martyr die,

he’ll smile upon us long from mural’s wall’.

And others said ‘what nation’s this?

we’re abandoned on our own −

all this for clothes to warm some dying bones’

And some said ‘that’s a traitor’s talk’

and others bowed their heads and thought that they

would hate to go that way.

Then Bobby Sands was dead

and there was banging on the bin lids on the Falls

echoed through to Shankill gospel halls.

And there was trouble on the street that night

and black flags started hanging while

people started ganging up,

black flags marking out the borders of belonging

the thin black barricade

that’s been around for thirty years

and stayed a fragile point up till today and cries

of how ten mothers’ sons all starved and died

when all they ate was hope and pride.