It is a safe place of pretence in the paddock,
Gelded and tamed as if butter would not melt.
Quietly penned, remaining within the fence
Confined, contained and content to graze.
I see you beneath the lush green paddocks,
The shamrocks, leprechauns and guinness.
Hidden in disguise to appease the unseen force
Of hatred and punishment that still puts the boot in.
A systematic abuse, century upon century
As life-long pay back for your place in history
As a land of poetry, art and song that raised
The True Cross high up on the western edge.
Unpolluted by world umpires and their usury
You naturally provided a way for the cave dwelling
Intimate to be one with Creator and wake up
A world of shadows into the light of a new day.
Desert dwellers on the far eastern edge rejecting
Manmade Babels found the same path as you
As if an underground root joined your lands
With an antidote and in the margins, East met West.
I see you beneath the appearance of dormancy,
A dangerous silence harbouring a volcanic identity
Of unbridled, untamed, undomesticated magnitude
To unsaddle the one rider that has no right on your back.
So I wait wild horse for you to rear up from the depths
And for justice to be served on the heavy sentence
You have endured, because when you finally break the reins
And spit the bit, it will mark the terminal implosion of an unholy empire.