You don’t get to be racist and Irish.
You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,
Plights and fights for freedom,
While kneeling on the neck of another.

You’re not entitled to sing songs
Of heroes and martyrs,
Mothers and fathers who cried
As they starved in a famine.

Or of brave-hearted,
Soft-spoken
Poets and artists,
Lined up in a yard,
Blindfolded and bound,
Waiting for Godot,
And point-blank to sound.

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We emigrated.
We immigrated.
We took refuge,
So cannot refuse
When it’s our time
To return the favour.

Land stolen,
Spirits broken,
Bodies crushed and swollen,
Unholy tokens of Christ,
Nailed to a tree,
That you hang around your neck
Like a noose of the free.

Our colour pasty,
Our accents thick,
Hands like shovels
From mortar and brick,
Laying foundations of cities
You now stand upon.

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Our suffering seeps from every stone
Your opportunities arise from,
Outstanding on the shoulders
Of our forefathers and foremothers
Who bore your mother’s mother.

Our music is for the righteous.
Our joys have been earned,
Well deserved and serve
To remind us to remember:

More Blacks.
More Dogs.
More Irish.

Still labelled leprechauns, Micks, Paddies, louts
We’re shouting to tell you:

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