Credo Credo

You soldiers who make for our holy
Pictures, grinding the glass with your
Rifle butts, kicking and jumping on them

With your hob-nailed boots, we
Are a richer dark than the Military
Machine could impose ever.

We have the ancient, hag-ridden, long-
in-the-tooth Mother, with her ugly
Jewish Child

Hangs in the depths of our dark
Secret being, no rifles can reach
Nor bullets, nor boots:

It was our icons not our guns
You spat on. When you found our guns
You got down on your knees to them

As if our guns were the holy thing …
And even should you shoot the swarthy
-faced Mother wither her ugly Jewish Child

Who bleed with the people, she’ll win
because she loses all with her people,
Has lost every war for centuries with us.

© Padraic Fiacc, Credo Credo 1986

Padraic Fiacc is drawing on the sense of violation felt by many who had their homes searched by British soldiers during the Troubles. Many of those homes were of Catholic families and were adorned with religious icons which Fiacc sees the soldiers violating while expressing their own reverence for guns.