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An army post in South Armagh. Photograph: Columba O'Hare/ Newry.ie
An army post in South Armagh. Photograph: Columba O'Hare/ Newry.ie

The Spy posts, ( just a dream?)

It was terrible for them to put them there, and terrible to take them all away,
to hide what they did to us, spying on us, every single day
They watched our every moment, even putting our children to their bed
They watched us having a picnic, burying our loved ones when they were dead

They spied on us going to our chapel, milking the cows in Byers and sheds
They took away all our rights, the very sanctity of our beds,
They towered high above the hill tops, a landscape lush and green
They crept from them in the dead of night, with painted faces painted that could not be seen

They took away the countryside innocence, no rambling, no couples sitting in cars
They took your every detail, holding and arresting you for hours and hours
The killed the innocence of our culture, even the joy of playing in the open fields
They kept their thumb upon us,From their tall structures made of steel

Photographing our every movement, with their mirror reflecting lens,
Recording every word and image, in our valleys, woods and glens
They radiated us with their black science, killed our dogs, that warned us in the night
That they were crawling around our farm yards, with devices that weren’t right
They had so much technology, the likes we had never seen, the towers lite dimly in the night glowingly eerily minted green.

Imagine there was no check point Charlie, no long kesh to be seen,  auschwitz knocked down, and sown out, just a field of green
That’s what they have done to south Armagh, sanitised it, nothing to be seen, mountain tops and hillsides, returned to lush and green
No trace of the oppressor, nothing to touch or feel, nothing to remind our children where our oppressors have been.

The poet without a pen-  Brendan Curran

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