WRA
Watching a film on the
development of the Irish Republican Army
with my father on a lazy Sunday –
two brothers are divided between
north and south,
having started with the same cause.
In the end, one puts the other to
the firing squad and I say “look at
the foolishness of men” and
my father says “they are fighting for freedom.
Perhaps if women had fought for
their emancipation, it wouldn’t
have taken so long.”
And while I am angry at first
and say, “men are not a
system of government to overthrow,
they are everything
and how can we fight
our fathers, brothers, children”
there is another part of me
lost in the front lines of a
women’s battalion, women in arms
with uniforms and medals and
all the play and stage of war,
they are defending the city of ladies.