The Five Demands

5 maggio 1981 – 5 maggio 2013

There’s an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing, my friend?
It has withstood the blood 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 was 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 in 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,
And 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 tyrant’s 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!”

The Rhythm of Time, Bobby Sands