Kilometres Per Hour

Road signage changing from miles to kilometres

Was it for this the heroes fell,
Why Ireland’s peace was bartered?
Dragged out from their prison cell
And inhumanely martyred?
Lifetimes spent in trying to usurp a foreign power –
And all for what?
I’m sure ‘twas not
Kilometres per hour.

Clothes are rent and teeth are gnashed
In utter desolation.
What other crisis could have smashed
The Irish population?
The rivers flowing to the sea taste salty now, and sour.
It seems a sin
To travel in
Kilometres per hour.

Oul’ Ireland has a beauty that
Was sculpted through tradition,
And now some faceless bureaucrat
Has damned it to perdition.
A dewdrop of a tear hangs now from every roadside flower.
Thus shies the land
From progress and
Kilometres per hour.

The rocks that lie upon the ground
From Dingle to Stamullen
Are shattered and cannot confound
The pen of Martin Cullen.
Our lovely miles are dead and gone, for progress must devour
Our island bliss,
For what? For this?
Kilometres per hour?

There’s many claim these road signs are
Quite pointless and misleading,
For traffic jams in Dublin bar
The slightest risk of speeding.
Pontius Bertie wipes his hands within his iv’ry tower,
But he well knows
Who did impose
Kilometres per hour.

Our politicians sell the line
That Europe must be followed,
Yet another surefire sign
That bricks have now been swallowed.
Our English neighbours don’t conform, don’t bend the knee or cower,
But Europe spoke
And we invoke
Kilometres per hour.

Oh, lift this plague of metric signs,
This scourge upon our culture.
Picking at our bones defines
The actions of a vulture.
Will ye come, will ye, will ye, will ye come to the bower?
Oul’ Ireland’s gone,
A curse upon
Kilometres per hour.