Soldiers
© By Padraic Fiacc
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for Seamus Deane
The altar boy marches up the altar steps.
The priest marches down. ‘Get up now
And be a soldier!’ says the nun
To the woman after giving birth, ‘Get up now
And march, march: Be a man!’
And the men are men and the women are men
And the children are men!
Mother carried a knife to work.
It was the thorn to her rose …
They say she died with her eyes open
In the French Hospital in New York.
I remember those eyes shining in the dark
Slum hallway the day after
I left the monastery: Eyes that were
A feast of welcome that said ‘Yes,
I’m glad you didn’t stay stuck there!’
‘Would you mind if I went to prison
Rather than war?’
‘No, for Ireland’s men all went to prison!’
At the bottom of a canyon of brick
She cursed and swore
‘You never see the sky!’
A lifetime after
just before
I go to sleep at night, I hear
That Anna Magnani voice screaming
Me deaf ‘No! No, you’re not
To heed the world!’ In one swift
Sentence she tells me not to yield
But to forbear:
‘Go to prison but never
never stop fighting. We are the poor
And the poor have to be “soldiers”.
‘You’re still a soldier, it’s only that
You’re losing the war.
‘And all the wars are lost anyway!’
© Padraic Fiacc, Soldiers
Padraic Fiacc describes an Irish American Catholic culture which instilled manliness and forebearance in the pursuit of futile causes.