.
To be alone on a beach
Is better than being in a vast crowd
Neither speaking, or listening in turn.
Civil Rights is a shared experience.
A dialogue, between equals.
Not a war, between people
Who only seek inequality
For their enemy.
My fear is that
The old hunger for a united Ireland
Is not a search for equality.
At present it is only an ambition
Based on mythology and tribalism
Where only one group can win
On the understanding that
One group will lose.
What use is that?
Even my cat on the mat
Knows that.
Civil Rights is an open door.
Not a door where only the chosen few
Can operate, an old gate, old school
Based on denominational dogma.
Where old ideas predominate.
So, what road are we on?
I’d rather have a “new Ireland”
Than a united Ireland.
But that means change, new ideas
New ideas and symbols
Letting old ideas go for good.
Civil Rights is a gift.
A gift without gunfire.
www.randallstephenhallsongs. com
A northern Irish artist
To be alone on a beach
Is better than being in a vast crowd
Neither speaking, or listening in turn.
Civil Rights is a shared experience.
A dialogue, between equals.
Not a war, between people
Who only seek inequality
For their enemy.
My fear is that
The old hunger for a united Ireland
Is not a search for equality.
At present it is only an ambition
Based on mythology and tribalism
Where only one group can win
On the understanding that
One group will lose.
What use is that?
Even my cat on the mat
Knows that.
Civil Rights is an open door.
Not a door where only the chosen few
Can operate, an old gate, old school
Based on denominational dogma.
Where old ideas predominate.
So, what road are we on?
I’d rather have a “new Ireland”
Than a united Ireland.
But that means change, new ideas
New ideas and symbols
Letting old ideas go for good.
Civil Rights is a gift.
A gift without gunfire.
www.randallstephenhallsongs.
A northern Irish artist
Have you ever heard of anyone who loved the people who stole their country, or the people who stole a country and then brought slaves from another country to work their economy for them and then claimed to be the land of the free? That’s USA hypocrisy, it applies everywhere, there are only 22 countries in the World that have not been invaded and occupied by England (under gunfire). Do you know why I am writing this in English, or do you know why you are writing in English? Do you know anything? Do you know what history is? Herodotus , the father of history could teach you a thing or two about it if you took the trouble to check it out. When you went for your first job interview did they ask you what school you attended before they asked what your qualifications for the job were? I don’t think so, it happened to me when I was 16 I’m now 73, I didn’t get the job, I gave the wrong answer to the the ‘ceist’, did your parents and grandparents know about this sort of thing, did they lose sleep worrying about it? What “old ideas” are you on about? Kicking the thieving colonists out of your country is not an “old idea”, it’s been around for quite a while now, the 1916 rebellion kick-started multiple other rebellions throughout the World which led to the destruction of the British Empire, not bad eh? Why do you think “Civil Rights” should be a gift? That’s an oxymoron , Civil Rights is what it is by its own definition, you either have it or you don’t it’s not something that can be ‘gifted’ to you. If someone stole your bicycle they wouldn’t ‘gift’ it back to you, would they? What do you mean by a “New Ireland”, there was precious little wrong with the old one before it was stolen from us (under gunfire). This has nothing to do with tribalism and mythology it’s all about theft of property (under gunfire). Not just theft of land (‘anschluss’ as the Nazis called it or ‘Jewish Settlement’ as they call it in Palestine (under gunfire)),It’s also theft of intellectual property and cultural identity, large swathes of the planet have been devastated by British ‘cultural imperialism’ and when anyone complained about it they were imprisoned and murdered and labelled ‘terrorists’. If you think you are a poet and living in Ireland I would recommend that you make a study of Bardic Poetry which in its time was one of the greatest cultural achievements of Humanity up to the Renaissance, It can be intractable even to good Irish speakers because of its intricate structure and well defined but complicated rules of composition (like a Bach fugue in many ways) but once you unravel the meaning behind it and reveal its matchless beauty you will take it with you for the rest of your life and read it with genuine awe and humility. if you had the wit and the patience and the intellectual clout to actually learn the Irish Language you might be able to have a stab at it rather than relying on silly epithets which look good in a book to be read by unenlightened fools who know nothing else and are none the less content with its ersatz erudition. There are dozens of examples of these so-called poets making excuses for living in a colonial cess pit. Real Irish poetry is something else, you don’t even know what it is. I haven’t even mentioned the 18th century post-colonial Gaelic poets, their work would shame you, if you even knew what it was and I suspect you don’t. Not quite destroyed yet (under gunfire).
Catch yourself on Stephen.