Oh, Caitlín Ní
Uallacháin, your sons have been martyred,
their lives cruelly
taken or cynically bartered.
Your tears fill the
Foyle, the Boyne and the Barrow
with stories that
chill righteous minds to the marrow.
The country’s awash
with the cries of your daughters
for Collins and
Connolly, Wolfe Tone and Waters.
In the year that we’re
feting the struggles of Larkin,
John Waters fell
foul of the laws about parkin’.
Our hero was randomly
handed a ticket
and forthwith
decided it just wasn’t cricket.
And so at the very
next magistrate’s session,
he took a brave
stance ‘gainst this savage repression.
From the dock, this
unflinchable journalist fashioned
a speech from the
heart, both inflamed and impassioned.
“I won’t doff the
cap to this fiendish knavery,”
he cried, as the
multitudes gasped at his bravery.
“I must take a
stand on behalf of the weary,
the sat-upon,
shat-upon folk of Dun Laoghaire .”
“Then you leave me
no option,” the judge spat out viciously.
“We cannot have
citizens acting seditiously.
Your words are insidious,
base and subliminal
and we have no
choice but to brand you a criminal.
Your words are
pernicious; you’ve shown no repentance
and now you are
facing a long prison sentence.”
And so, John was
brought under Garda protection
to a gloomy,
voluminous house of correction
and thrown in a
cell, there to ponder and languish,
a soul in dark
torment, alone and in anguish.
“Oh Father,” he
cried, “See where this stand has taken me!
In my hour of need,
why hast thou forsaken me?”
A felon on his
right hand, a felon on his left,
he descended to
Hell, alone and bereft.
But courage and
strength may be found when you need ‘em,
as when you are
cruelly deprived of your freedom.
And just as his
thoughts were enveloped by gloom,
the boulder was
suddenly rolled from his tomb.
Weakly, the bars of
authority yielded
as our hero emerged
into sunlight, eyes shielded,
his spirit
unbroken, unquenched and undaunted,
his face deeply
lined with the look of the haunted.
Three cent in his
pocket, kept safe from the beadle,
he could easily slip
through the eye of a needle.
But suddenly,
families started appearing,
unfurling their
banners and raucously cheering
and they lined all
the streets on the south of the city
for the man who had
faced down the Parking Committee.
Oh Ireland
to fight for our
freedom! God bless you, John Waters.
