Lyra
There’ll not be a statue, but maybe a plaque.
A reminder to us, when time seemed to go back,
To an earlier Ireland, a Derry long gone,
An Ulster of which is in poem and song.
Her voice for now silenced, her visions live on,
Ideas, the stories, she’d worked on not long,
All crushed in a second, a coward’s attempt,
At an unknown glory, who knows what was meant.

Give a gun to a boy, make him feel like a man,
He’ll aim it at random, and shoot what he can,
He’ll ignore the murals from a stolen car,
Twenty Good Fridays, we’d really come far.

A mother’s child, a campaigner, a writer,
A partners lost love, now a legend, a fighter.
She’d stood up and won, versus enemies stronger,
Than a child with a pistol, time should’ve been longer.

Her name will go down, with writers on lists,
Whose lives ended early, eternally missed,
Lived with the words, and worked with the pen,
Murdered by cowards, not heroes, not men.
By Michael Fitzpatrick