When will we rise up
And take off their masks?
From hundreds of years
Of a badly soiled past?
When will we rise up
The Phoenix and Crow
To tell all these bluffers
Go on now, just go?
.
When will we rise up
Like a rough salty sea
To clean all our beaches
Of hatred and be?
When will we stand up
And cut off their gas?
It doesn’t come from their hearts.
Destroyed by just class.
The ass and the donkey
The monkey and dog
The rough little tinkers
Who shoot from the bog.
The messin’ wee muckers
With space in their heads.
The targets they kill
Is only because they see red.
And all through this tragedy
The fences come down.
The walls just collapse
No princes, no crowns.
All through the purgatory
Our story goes on?
For all Ireland’s fields
Is why hatred is sewn.
www.randallstephenhallsongs.
Randall Stephen Hall
Is a northern Irish artist
So why did I use my own image of a dying poisoned rat along with my poem?
All rats are creatures created within nature itself. That’s a mysterious thing.
We are conditioned to either like or dislike rats. But I understand they can bring dangers with them
and the communities in which they live.
They are neither beneath us or above us as a species. They are often disregarded when they should
actually be understood, just like crows, badgers, foxes and rabbits.
Stephen Stiofán