After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun