The Sign

"The Sign"

-Eric Bogle

In the summer of last year, in a city* far from here

That stands on the shores of the fair Pacific sea

I walked it's pleasant streets, no view in mind, no one to meet

Content to wander where my aimless feet led me

A few streets from my hotel, I passed an old stone wall

where three words had been scrawled by an unknown hand

When I read them I stopped dead, in disbelief I shook my head

For the words on that wall read, "Free Bobby Sands"

As the sun began to fall, and the day began to die

Thought I heard the wild geese call, from a dark and empty sky

For long minutes I stood there, in that busy thoroughfare

While the past rose sharp and clear in my mind's eye

I saw it all again, the passion, hate, and pain

the indifference and the shame as a young man died

But it was all so long ago, and who now cares or knows

why Bobby Sands chose his lonely death?

But to the one who wrote that sign,

it seems that Bobby's light still shines

The words rang from another time,

but the paint was fresh

As the sun began to fall, and the day began to die

Thought I heard the wild geese call, from a dark and empty sky

So I went down to the sea, to let it's wild song comfort me

But my thoughts would not let me be, and unchecked they ran

Through my future, present, and past,

not for the first time nor the last

I heard them ask, "Could you be the kind of man

who would gladly sacrifice everything, even life

and put no price on a cause, or an ideal?"

No answer echoed in my heart, so I turned and I walked back

through the twilight's deepening dark, to my hotel.

****************

Historical Note:

Bobby Sands, MP, was imprisoned in 1981 under criminal charges

stemming from his alleged involvement in IRA terrorist activities

in Ulster Province (Northern Ireland). Mr. Sands, along with

20 other alleged IRA members in prison awaiting trial, went

on a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions in the prison, and to

have the IRA members reclassified as "political prisoners".

The hunger strike lasted more than 60 days, resulting in the deaths

of many of the prisoners, of which Mr. Sands was the first to succumb.

*Auckland, New Zealand