We Ourselves

The fields aflame
with dark-granite laments
of the soil once ours
green and free 'neath the sky
Plague-driven soil
rents and tax
to a foreign lord
The land that our father's blood fed--
do you hear it's cries in the wind?
unchained,
lifted out beneath
St. George's bloodied cross

How I miss that green-golden land,
the way the valley danced with light and shade
County Cork, does that wind still speak
that yesterday shook the barley free of dew?

The blood that soaked Beal na Blath
still runs through Ireland's soul