The Black and Tans
(later with a sprinkling of impoverished Irish men.)
The Black and Tans..
Those economic migrants
from a hostile land….
That brutal band of imbeciles.
Those untrained men in uniforms
of tattered mix and match
and bile.….
Armed men of crazed barbarity
and gung ho cruel brutality,
Raiding half starving cottages,
Driving off on lorries…
Unruly, drunken savages.
The trigger happy Black and Tans
shot …bystander citizens…
Woman, child or man.
And in the homes …
we heard the mortal groans
of war…of women…beaten,
raped and fallen twisted
on their kitchen floors.
‘Half drunk or whole-mad
soldiery…wrote Yeats.
To which his sister Lily,
witness to an army so deranged,
Revealed -
I was no Sinn Feiner
in the past….
But now…but now..
all that has changed.
Kristine Byrne…7am. 11th Jan. 2020
I wrote this in 30 mins - response to articles.
It is a bit raw…but I think I’ll leave it as is.
Painting by Jack Yeats.