now is the time for reels and fancy steps,
to make merry, make melancholy;
pushing back the shortest month out of ken,
away with its tribal clatterings and dark revelry
in favor of pipes and strings and scattered lilting words
of a 'proper' ancient tongue rarely uttered.
now's the time to tap the fiddler,
to lean back into the raft of misty melodies
that evokes the heavy-footed heath ye starved on,
where the British practiced slavery first
before moving the enterprise south;
evokes the teeming stinking cities ye crowded into,
where 'Catholic' was a fighting word (and so be it),
but "be damned if we'll be shipped off in blue,
fight and die to free niggers - we'll burn down
the whole of New York first!"
(aye, tis what ye said, and nearly did).
sweet melodies lead to the promised lands
of bungalows and quiet dominion,
where bellies and pockets are always full.
now is the time for blood oaths and pledges of resistance,
fealty to the republic, boyos laid to sod,
promises to keep.
now's the time to lift a glass:
to James Joyce, for Finnegan and Molly Bloom,
for reclaiming Eire's throbbing Gaelic soul
back from St. Patrick;
to Yeates, for admiring the recklessness of artists;
to Belfast - she often looks like Beirut
and wails like Sarajevo.
in a Bogside pub all is bliss;
one for the road is an insult to the road.
we all dance arm in arm, full throated,
shoes smelling of beer,
all black and proud.
in stateside cities is where solidarity gets
tossed into gutters,
and color lines are as clear as accents;
only stateside am i compelled to remember
what 'black irish' doesn't mean.