The street lamp light is fading now,
The sun begins to rise,
Armoured police, like beetles creep,
As factory whistles blow,
Workers scurry to the mills, another day begun,
In Belfast, August, '69, 'midst the terror
Of the gun.
Rows of red-bricked houses, soulless,
Charred and burnt,
Stand face to face and back to back,
There's no lace curtains now
An echo from the distant past,
Impervious to pain,
Cement and bricks and human skull
Will raise them up again.
From my flat above the streets I stare,
I curse my new found home,
No human skill will raise my love,
To bloom into a man,
Shot by cowards in his bed
At the tender age of nine,
CRY MURDER! my child Patrick's dead
In Belfast '69.
The sun begins to rise,
Armoured police, like beetles creep,
As factory whistles blow,
Workers scurry to the mills, another day begun,
In Belfast, August, '69, 'midst the terror
Of the gun.
Rows of red-bricked houses, soulless,
Charred and burnt,
Stand face to face and back to back,
There's no lace curtains now
An echo from the distant past,
Impervious to pain,
Cement and bricks and human skull
Will raise them up again.
From my flat above the streets I stare,
I curse my new found home,
No human skill will raise my love,
To bloom into a man,
Shot by cowards in his bed
At the tender age of nine,
CRY MURDER! my child Patrick's dead
In Belfast '69.
envoyé par Alessandro - 22/2/2010 - 14:55
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Album “This Is Free Belfast! – Irish Rebel Songs from the Six Counties”, Folkways Records
Scritta da Barney McIlvogue
To the memory of Patrick Rooney, aged nine, killed by a stray bullet, Divis Street, Belfast, during the fighting on the night of 14th August, 1969.
On that night, Northern Ireland's 90% Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), rioted throughout the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast. They savagely attacked innocent people and drove through the streets indiscriminately firing their weapons. One result of this demonstration of the RUC's fascist and racist interpretation of law and order was the murder of little Patrick Rooney while he lay in his bed.
One wonders if Patrick's father could view his little boy's body with part of his head blown off, the room awash with Patrick's blood, and then dismiss this horror from his mind with a "manly" shrug of his shoulders and the utterance of some bromide such as “War is hell!”
One wonders how Irish-Americans would react if somehow the policeman who murdered Patrick was convicted, but later freed and made a hero of by the Prime Minister or the Premier.