Yesterday I knew no lullaby But you have taught me overnight to order Its tune, from your unreasoned end its reason, Its rhythm from the discord of your murder Its motive from the fact you cannot listen.
We who should have known how to instruct With rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep, Names for the animals you took to bed, Tales to distract, legends to protect,
Later an idiom for you to keep And living, learn, must learn from you, dead,
To make our broken images rebuild Themselves around your limbs, your broken
Talk has cost, a new language. Child Of our time, our times have robbed your cradle.
17 May 1974 [5]
[10]
[15]
GLOSSARY
[5] discord: out of sync; not in harmony
[11] idiom: a form of expression natural to a language, person or a group of people
[19] 17 May 1974:the date of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings