The flags of the city are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.
Plastic tubas tinselly riddling
The cliche's skies;
The Patrician soul is not present
Among the discarded packets,
And rust lies below the veneer
Of a rotting lip-service.
The flags in the streets are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.

The weak cold wind is blowing
On the dust of dead aspirations,
And cleansing rain revives not
The mildewed Green.
"Once again, brothers'; and tiredly
Type it to Thule or Hy Brasil
The words profaning the air.
The flags of the city are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.

No Seanchan to die for the poets,
No youth, no hope, no detergent
To wash the grey-white of living
Hoist on a pole,
The faceless streams pouring past
The tomb of Cu Chullain, spending
Themselves in the dried womb of Erin.
The flags in the streets are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.

The soul of Patrick is lonely
Seeking oil in the North Sea,
Sand-hogging the street mire of London,
Desperately lonely in Africa
Under bombed palms,
For paternity searching in Brendan's
Manhattan and Bronx, while at home
The flags of the city are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.

Decimalled gold limply dulling
On shopworn flagstaffs, making
A crucified trio descending
To ultimate dust,
Rotting the roots of expecting,
A rich pregnance rejecting
In the new commercial aborting.
The flags in the streets are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.

With the penny mortician awaiting,
To the wake come unknowing scions,
Eager, nostalgic, new-living
Seeking a sign,
A sword to gleam in the night.
But the near-spent bulb is flickering,
Fly-blown, loose in its holder,
And the words on the wind are gone.
The flags of the city are grubby,
Shields of the Eireannach unpainted.