Lorcan Poem by Paddy Glackin

Why are you here? go back home
Is it not my nations right to walk alone.

As Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon
Plied their trade amongst their platoon.
Comrades all yet knew right from wrong
conscience choked from within the throng.

Over the top like dandelion puff
bodies left lying in squalid muck.

You Rita Restorick left to cry their poems
As your son Stephen donated his bones
To the same uniform as they before
Over the top.... at the car door.

The sun behind, from raised ground
Sights settled on the Royal Crown.

Your labour remembered your childbirth pain
Your searing heat for colonial gain.
Did you cry the very second his pink skin was born?
To die for his country in that uniform.

Nothing has changed