Still Marching
It’s 51 years since they lay slaughtered on our streets;
Yet it still seems like yesterday, those thousands of marching feet.
The truth finally came out, all so late and still reluctantly from them;
It took years of protest and inquiry to establish the innocence of our men.
It happened before in Croke Park, Amritsar and everywhere their uninvited empire appeared;
Citizens who objected were just tortured and murdered; it’s the freedom of small nations they fear.
Such cruelty, such arrogance and such butchery, the currency of invasion of homelands;
But time has caught up as their empire fades and erodes, just like the shifting sands.
New stories come and new stories go; yet the Bloody Sunday story remains;
And forever the people of Derry will remember and honour their names.
But they still deny justice to the innocent, and no murderer has done time;
In the eyes of the empire shooting us Irish remains no crime.
So the march goes on and our dead sons lay still;
We’re still demanding rights and justice, with renewed vigour and will.
Governments will come and governments will go and be gladly forgotten:
But Bloody Sunday is a beacon that exposes a core that is rotten.
And for another 50 years and 50 years more, the murdered, wounded and injured will live on;
As our offspring and theirs, remind them that a risen people will not be walked upon.
And when the sun finally sets on this empire of blood, as it surely will on some future day;
Derry will still honour those martyrs who marched for our rights and gave us a say.