UPON hearing that the front six rows of the church at Veronica Guerin's funeral were taken by politicians, with apologies to Kipling
She shall not return to us, the resolute the strong,
The eager and whole hearted whom we knew,
But the men who idled daily while she singly sought out wrong,
Shall they soon again seek honour beyond all due?
She shall not return to us, this woman coldly slain,
While Dail and court and law were flouted day by day,
Yet those Ministers for Justice, supine, babbling, vain,
Are they too strong and shrewd to put away?
She shall not return to us while Day and Night divide
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle minded overlings who quibbled as she died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Unrepentant Killers
We have listened to their counsels, to their stealthy devious schemes,
As in their polished cars unpunished they smoothly go.
Shall they nightly be allowed their sweet intro ii bled dreams,
Or should they now be mused to hear what we all know?
Unrepentant killers have been shoulder borne from docks,
A misspelt word their pass to liberty.
Yet is the land which rejoices that its cell doors have no locks,
Not soon beset by the set it once set free?
We have yearly supped on cowardice and nightly dined on sloth,
While frugal gunmen toiled right through our lazy feast.
Should we be astonished now, and filled with puzzled wrath,
That the pleasures of our banquet board have ceased?
We ate downwind of the Border corpse, our backs to the Border Cain,
While our courts became the playthings for the sly.
Was it not therefore certain that soon all our laws were vain,
If we honoured dishonour and the Border lie?
No foreign trial in a foreign court beneath a foreign sun,
Awaits him who kills with a single shot to the brain.
If the courts permit the stain of Cain, done without a rapid fire gun,
Do we wonder at the spreading of the stain?
Who is to blame?
We have trampled the grapes of a murderous wine
And placed the juice in a flask of its own,
By savouring the fruits of that contaminant vine.
Are we merely harvesting what we have sown?
In competence unpunished, the conniving rewarded well,
Is it strange that as we sank ii to this shame,
With humiliation upon humiliation, as regular as a bell,
And nobody responsible stands to share the blame?
This coral was long in making, appeasement was the reef
Indolence adding encrustation through the years.
But the men who heard our drowning cries and chid us in our grief
Are they now the ones to soothe us in our fears?
They promised us an untroubled future like witches on a heath,
Assuring us, all shall prove well in due season,
And the men who urge us insolently to lend our silver to the thief
Are we now to accept their promises of reason?
When the benches of a mourning church resemble the sitting Dail
And duty's past evaders yelp much ado,
Do we not hear surely and disbelievingly as we plummet through our fall,
Pleas of guilty innocence from guilty pew?
After the Storm
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
And when the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they calm us, while they promise large amends,
Even which they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and reestablish each career?
Shall we reelect and reappoint them, the authors of this slum.
The very ones who whipped us into cheers?
Or will they condemn us now for what we have become,
And rent us some rags to mop away our tears?
Their lives cannot repay us, their deaths could not undo.
The shame that they have laid upon our land.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it still in power and undamned?
Probably.