Folly - a History

Sole survivor of a nuclear winter the likes of which the world has seldom seen, (Except for on a Saturday night when fire lights their dreams) He strolls on down to the place with the smoke billowing from a slightly open door; He has wandered down the streets with the past cobbling beneath his feet. This is Dickens’ London! This is two-families-to-a-room Dublin, Where loaves of bread are ridden with maggots, And whores spread that cultured disease which many a man of culture truly believes! Down the country men and women and their little folk starve beyond belief, A collective tragedy unnoticed before too long by the laissez-faire men from across the sea. And young people leave this barren land, cruel beneath their feet, snapping at their feet With a crushing reminder of the last few years, when dignity became like pebbles thrown to the wind. "Dignity should stand tall!" Shouted the fore-runners of Collins and Dev, And they erected a stone, tall, mighty. We have a past beyond those who deem What that past is, without even batting an eyelid to the suffering of the land. Truly, we are not them, for this to happen. That was some fifty years on, before our words could comprehend - When we shaped our language, our culture – The fearsome Cú Chulainn who stood tall during times of war, Or the maidens dancing at the cross roads where reality and myth intertwine. We were truly a nation, and we fought for this land. Then we fought each other. Then we left our land divided. We knew our myths were folly, as tanks rolled across the northern sea And those guns ran up from the south. Our myths were strongest then, when they were exposed and weak - The boy with the fire in his eye and disillusion in his heart. And as Israel rolls into Palestine, soaked in the blood of their own myths and The blood of innocents on their hands, with a collective memory of Hell incarnate, I think to myself, I hope that something can be salvaged from the bloody birth of nations, Something tangible, respectable, something their children can be proud of. But, like me, their children will look back on it all and think - What Folly!