Ireland's OWN: Poetry and Prose

25th Anniversary Hungerstrike Poem
Cáirde Croga Go Deo

Brave Friends Forever

—by Fionnbarra O’ Dochartaigh*

O’er James Connolly House, the black flag flew,
While ‘neath it wept, comrades old and new,
Thousands lined, in columns long,
To bid a last farewell, to our martyred sons.

Filing past, each flower-decked bier,
The common people, sighed, ‘mid tears,
For two workers’ sons, had come back home,
To we Bogside folk, forever, each our own.

For five long years, in solitude,
Neither books nor papers even to read,
The outside world, was far away,
Even God’s own sunlight, denied, each day.

Like hundreds, naked lay in jail,
In tomb-like cells with a sole blanket grey,
Comrades all, on protest stayed,
Never to meet, nor ‘hello’ say.

They cried for Justice, but few took heed,
The rich man, as ever, stayed aloof,
The clergy, mainly, they played deaf,
While like the proverbial ostrich, politicians stood.

When all other means did not prevail,
On hunger-strike went ten, some for o’re sixty days.
Yes, Freedom came, but with it death,
And while the May Flower blooms, we shan’t forget.

*Copyright © Fionnbarra O’ Dochartaigh
August/Lunasa 22, 1981,
Doire Colmcille.
Reprinted at Ireland's OWN with permission.