https://youtube/watch?v=hrDSw4FHWxcLast year Miko Peled read Samer Issawi’s defiant message at the grave of Bobby Sands the Irish Republican hunger striker. Samer Issawi was arrested this year just before the latest Israeli offensive on Gaza. His sister Shireen and brother Medhat were already imprisoned. Samer is just one of the thousands of Political Prisoners we will be remembering on Global Political Prisoners Day on the 12th to the 13th of December. Bobby Sands (1954 – 1980) was a poet and Irish political prisoner. He wrote: ”I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign, independent socialist republic.” He died aged 27, on May 5th 1980 after 65 days on hunger strike. His demand was to be recognised as a political POW having affirmed “of course I can be murdered but I remain what I am, a political POW and no-one, not even the British, can change that”. The Rhythm Of Time There’s an inner thing in every man, Do you know this thing my friend? It has withstood the blows of a million years, And will do so to the end. It was born when time did not exist, And it grew up out of life, It cut down evil’s strangling vines, Like a slashing searing knife. It lit fires when fires were not, And burnt the mind of man, Tempering leadened hearts to steel, From the time that time began. It wept by the waters of Babylon, And when all men were a loss, It screeched in writhing agony, And it hung bleeding from the Cross. It died in Rome by lion and sword, And in defiant cruel array, When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’ Along the Appian Way. It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor, And frightened lord and king, And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare, As e’er a living thing. It smiled in holy innocence, Before conquistadors of old, So meek and tame and unaware, Of the deathly power of gold. It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets, And stormed the old Bastille, And marched upon the serpent’s head, And crushed it ‘neath its heel. It died in blood on Buffalo Plains, And starved by moons of rain, Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee, But it will come to rise again. It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes, As it was knelt upon the ground, And it died in great defiance, As they coldly shot it down. It is found in every light of hope, It knows no bounds nor space It has risen in red and black and white, It is there in every race. It lies in the hearts of heroes dead, It screams in tyrants’ eyes, It has reached the peak of mountains high, It comes searing ‘cross the skies. It lights the dark of this prison cell, It thunders forth its might, It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend, That thought that says ‘I’m right!’ Bobby Sands.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 22:22:52 +0000