Former Taoiseach Berti Ahern, in Greystones 2007

A Case of  Celtic Cat Burglars

That feel fine factor rife in Ireland in the 90s,
when media swelled with pages advertising jobs
bringing home many sons of Erin and its daughters
who were driven by despair to work in foreign parts
coined a phrase and a Celtic Tiger stalked this land.

To work this Eldorado migrants followed quickly
from nations milked by governments and corporations
and with each came those untold stories of corruption,
key resources squandered, siphoned off in bullion,
the gold stored in foreign banks with diamonds galore.

Today Mister Ritchie Boucher, Bank of Ireland boss,
declined a two million dollar pension top up due
to demands by people taxed to keep the bank alive,
knowing that on retirement four years from now he will
have to manage monthly on eighty thousand dollars.

He, men like him, knew well Ireland was overheating
by the scandalous ransoms people paid for real estate
when mortgagees were told to sign on the dotted line
by legal loan-sharks who said “there is no other way”
while computers spewed out designs to be ashamed of
while bankers, builders, lawyers and accountants stuffed their
pockets full of loot, filing clients into tiny
concrete spaces, forgetting they were real people.

One man who led the mob that badly let us down was
Bertie Ahern, highest paid politician in the
world, bar one, who to this day picks up his pay
for a seat given to him by the people to speak
for them in parliament, who is rarely seen or heard,
except in Old Americay to which he jets and
insists on first class travel and luxury hotels
while picking up one hundred thousand dollars for a
single speech on—what could he say that is worth so much?

What might we do with them—not a guillotine or firing squad
should the people’s revolution come—a more fitting sentence
for ripping out the nation’s heart and soul, might be to provide
each with jemmy, black mask, and little black bag, tools of their trade
and chain them to street corners where the homeless beg and workless
migrants stand and sing sad and hungry songs for their fares back home.