Jean~ Kilmainham Jail should be on the list of every Irish American tourist to Dublin. Whenever we have friends with us who have never been to Ireland it is one of our MUST places to take them. The experience is profound. I remember fighting back tears in the yard where the children were taken for a brief airing. What a terrible terrible life for these small ones. The cells, the dampness, the black cross where those who were murdered for the Easter Monday Rebellion, words cannot describe. The poem is a special favorite. Mary Ellen Chambers Lakewood, OH "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> wrote: KILMAINHAM JAIL: EASTER SUNDAY, 1966 Sunbursts over this execution yard Mitigate high, harsh walls. A lowly Black cross marks the deaths we are here to honour, Relieved by an Easter lily. Wearing the nineteen-sixteen medal, a few Veterans and white-haired women recall The Post Office, Clanwilliam House, the College of Surgeons, Jacob's factory -- all Those desperate strongholds caught in a crossfire Between the English guns And Dublin's withering incredulity. Against the wall where once Connolly, strapped to a chair, was shot, a platform Holds movie cameras. They sight On the guard of honour beneath the tricolor, An officer with a horseman's light And quiet hands, and now the old President Who, soldierly still in bearing, Steps out to lay a wreath under the plaque. As then, no grandiose words, no cheering -- Only a pause in the splatter of Dublin talk, A whisper of phantom volleys. How could they know, those men in the sunless cells, What would flower from their blood and England's follies? Their dreams, coming full circle, had punctured upon The violence that gave them breath and cut them loose. They bargained on death: death came to keep the bargain. Pious postcards of men dying in spruce Green uniforms, angels beckoning them aloft, Only cheapen their cause. Today they are hailed As Martyrs; but then they bore the ridiculed shame of Mountebanks in a tragedy which has failed. And they were neither the one nor the other -- simply Devoted men who, though the odds were stacked Against them, believed their country's age-old plight And the moment gave no option but to act. Now the leaders, each in his sweating cell, The future a blind wall and the unwinking Eyes of firing-squad rifles, pass their time In letters home, in prayer. Maybe they are thinking Of Mount Street, the blazing rooftops, the Post Office, Wrapping that glory round them against the cold Shadow of death. Who knows the pull and recoil of A doomed heart? They are gone as a tale that is told, The fourteen men. Let them be more than a legend: Ghost-voices of Kilmainham, claim your due -- This is not yet the Ireland we fought for. You living, make our Easter dreams come true. -- C. Day-Lewis, late Poet Laureate of England, born Ballintubbert, Co. Laois ==== IRELAND Mailing List ==== Ireland Mailing List website..surname registry, links, lookup volunteers,unsubscribe, change your subscription from L to D or D to L http://www.connorsgenealogy.com/IrelandList/