Скачать или смотреть The Curlews cry

Written in response to the current ecological crisis on Lough Neagh

The Curlews cry

The winter fowl have left us
They haven’t come this years
No midnight swans a’ calling
Those lovers lost I fear

No plover is a nesting
The bog has gone to plough
The crying of the curlew
Is but a memory now

No long line set at evening
In my cot with salmon sky
No trout or eel for morning meal
The catch it has run dry

Those ghosts will haunt our children
A wailing in the night
A distant cry from times gone by
An omen of our plight

Who will heal the water
of our sacred holy well
Not landlord thief or absentee
With nothing left to sell

I have a premonition
when we call upon our own
To hear on high the curlews cry
And remember where we’re from.

To restore this wondrous garden
Our connection to the earth
To rid the need for waste and greed
And know what we are worth.

Barry Kerr 2024