Blood Brothers

Blood Brothers As one, in life, they tug their craft Over the sun bleached sands Salt air fills heaving chests The tide beckons with friendly waves. They float over foam, spray in their eyes, Laughs mix with the great loon’s cries ruddy lads on Harbor Cork empty hunger left ashore The fertile land that fed their folk Has naught milk from withered breast A dusty tomb in barren ground all that’s left to give her poor. With greedy eyes they absorb The last stand of their youth Amongst millions who abandon Erin For hope of work and bread From Hibernia they descend into stinking metal bowels rife with waste and vermin; a place for many of last rites Cruel, Ellis Island casts them apart; Tagged as sick one cannot debark Until the final port-of-call, New Orleans, Dixieland. Each finds solace with a lass To liven his spirit anew Numb the pain of brethren rived quell the hissing in his soul. Cries of squirming newborns Comfort two lads far apart; tears shed for a lost brother bedew yearning hearts. Shrill calls to war pierce their lives; A nation torn in two. Swept up in jingoistic storms, Slaughter joined, kith forsook. Blue and Gray, sent forth to kill, Our lads march inexorably nigh over hills of limbs, hasty graves; past rivers of guts and blood. In a massacre at Fredericksburg, fated, they meet again. Amid blindness borne of night and smoke they dance a macabre embrace. Deathly wounded Blue cries out in Gaelic born of County Cork. The other hears an unforgotten voice; drags the body to the light. As he sees the dead tormented face mortal anguish breaks his heart. Arms entwined is how they’re found; as one, once again, in death.