the centenarians

(Lines written with apologies to Siegfried Sassoon after the performance of a musical drama at the National Concert Hall Dublin in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Rising.)

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

there is something absent here
there is something hollow 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 turns to coiffeured maisie
and grips her lily ass
oh darling he sighs elevated
i do so love the working class

i wish a gawping rah man would come
lurching through 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 insult to his republic
or some mild inconveniencing
of the drug dealing
people trafficking
child abusing
heroic
i
r
a-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h

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