Easter '16 Poem for the Centenary

Easter ‘16

A hundred years have come and gone,

since proclamation day.

How would the signatories feel?

Of our island today.

Reflect upon what happened then.

Commemorate their deed.

For what we have we owe to them.

A country that they freed.

 

Penultimate, Easter sixteen.

For self rule and freedom.

Release from the rusting shackles

of the ageing kingdom. 

 

Stood outside of the GPO,

looking on Sackville Street,

Pearse proclaimed our independence

Liberty’s heart did beat.

 

Six days the uprising did rage.

Many it did divide,

As the volunteers fought and died,

As mauser bullets cried.

 

Heavy handed foreign Maxwell,

Ordered execution.

Filled the nation with revulsion,

Flaming revolution.

The resonance of the events,

from the rebellion week

to the shock wave of civil war.

Sovereignty oblique.

 

Let’s not lose what they gave to us.

Nor idle hands extract,

for the whims of politicians

and newspaper impact.

To those then, before and after,

Easter nineteen sixteen.

Who gave themselves so we can choose.

Éirinn go brách most green.

Forget not their sacrifices,

free will they did attain.

It can be lost so easily,

Much harder to regain.

Remember the signatories,

Connolly, Pearse and Clarke,

Plunkett, MacDermott, MacDonagh

and Ceannt, they left their mark.

 

A hundred years have come and gone,

since proclamation day.

How would the signatories feel?

Of our island today.