“
A Magnum Paucity by Stewart Stafford
Build the nation's mausoleum,
Light the people's funeral pyre,
For Hibernia's sons and daughters,
In genocide to expire.
Romantic Ireland has no grave,
It died foraging at the roadside for bites,
Or on a coffin ship out of reach of the New World,
An empire's boot on the throat for last rites.
Did you know your identity all along?
Or find it struggling and aghast?
Old Eireann was the first expendable colony,
And egregiously, not Britannia's last.
Constricting stomachs do not growl patriotic oaths,
Freedom is a stranger to a starved mind,
Force-feed our children grapes of wrath,
With liberation dead on the vine.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
”
”