the centenarians

(lines written with apology to Siegfried Sassoon after the performance of a musical drama at the National Concert Hall Dublin commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Rising)

the seats are packed
with well heeled teachers civil servants and lawyers too
young men and old in finery bedecked
children swathed in scarlet and blue
whilst on the stage prancing charlatans sing
about the innate glory of 1916

there is something absent here
there is something evil here
no smell of cordite sickens delicate nostrils
the cries of the dying are theatrical and do not offend the ear
the bloodstains are artistically daubed
no bullet kills
reality must not intrude
upon our valedictorean interlude


besuited ronald sits with coiffeured maisie
and pats her lily ass
oh darling he sighs elevated
i do so love the working class

i wish a gawping Rah man would come
lurching down the stalls
with his gun drawn
and pick out one of them
he'd shoot them in the knees or in the bawls
for some perceived slight
to his republic
or more likely some mild inconveniencing
of the drug dealing people trafficking child abusing bank robbing prostitution rackateering
heroic
i
r
a

let the well dressed coiffeured ones look on
at the tortures they are celebrating in song

i really do wish it might come to pass
that these would know real bloodshed and death and tears
and there would be no more twee jingles about the pseudo heroism of the working class
to mock the splattered corpses of the disappeared