Easter Rising memorabilia auction hit by poor demand (The Irish Times, 13/02/2016)

It was the songs, the anthems that did for them,
the sheet music with yellowed edges coming in
as lot number seventeen in the catalogue
                                a bargain to be had
with Somewhere a Voice is Calling
or the Rose of No-Man's Land, chorus after chorus
that went to their heads, sent
them spinning over the top. And somewhere

the Angelus bell and the small arms fire
go head to head, the warning shots
ringing out, a thunderous gunship on the Liffey,
                                  eighteen pounders
on their way upstream, a grim perambulation
pushing past the hand-to-mouth agonies
of tenement slums;

the shell cases turning up at auction
or in car boot sales, going,
                 going, gone for a song.

Above in the Phoenix Park, Her Ladyship
notes the all-clear, the calm, the tragic cast
of this Beloved Land, the toss-up

between the emerald taffeta and the crimson silk:
(colour could get you killed in a time like this)

and on the flipside, colour draining from the faces
of the few, a white cloth pinned squarely
to the chest, the coup de grace, a bullet to the head
no drums, no uillinn pipes, no last rites:

                                           finis, kaput, il n’y a plus

and the baton up for grabs, to be sold for a figure
undisclosed. A lick of paint on the postbox.  
New lamps for old.

Dolores Stewart writes poetry in Irish and English and publishes with Dedalus Press and Coiscéim. She is working on a bilingual collection