You stood then, fifteen-years-old,
out of school and out of luck.

Your ragged top strung
across pubescent pectorals
that were heavy and solid as crates,
akin to Atlas,
holding this imploding world
but carrying me,
your cousin, also.

There where limestone levees
swept fresh flotsam into squalid streets
and old men
stacked cargo,
like years,
against the wind.

You rose your voice, bitter and gritty as Lancashire silt
in flight like the hawks
in our homeland’s North.

‘They’re hanging men and women
for the wearing of the green.’

Ecstatic, I listened.
Protective, I massaged your neck,
the muscle stiffened by fierce labour.

I feared our past.

This was the Eighties,
and you reclaimed that isle
our forefathers had forsaken.

‘Then since the colour we must wear
is England’s cruel red’ you lamented,
‘sure Ireland’s songs we’ll ne’er forget’

Suddenly men;
twice, thrice, your age sung in chorus,
in crescendo,
ungainly as penguins on the picket line,
they sang and sang and gave the world what for.