If you're subscribed to this mostly-abandoned blog and wondering where this comes from, well, there's not much I can say; this was a convenient place to put it.
So, a month or so ago, I riffed a couple lines out of "Green Fields of France (No Man's Land)" about a school shooting. I heard the Dropkick Murphys version again on my way to work, and it brought those feelings back, so I took a bit today to write it out fully.
It's a bare filk; I left a lot the same, which is, in some ways, even sadder, that a poem about World War I maps so well to the mass murder of children at school.
***
Oh how do you do, Matilda McBrideDo you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the young fallen in 2016
Well I hope you died quick
And I hope you died clean
Or Tilly McBride, was it slow and obscene
Did they send out their thoughts
Did they send out their prayers
Did they tell your classmates how everyone cares
Did they give you a page in the year book
Did anyone do anything for the life that they took?
And did you leave a mom or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 2016
To that loyal heart you're forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown plastic frame
Did they send out their thoughts
Did they send out their prayers
Did they tell your classmates how everyone cares
Did they give you a page in the year book
Did anyone do anything for the life that they took?
The sun shining down on these green fields this day
The warm wind blows gently and your cousins still play
Your story has vanished off the front page
Replaced in the news with the next outrage
But here in this graveyard filled up with your friends
Some come to cry, but none make amends
For Congress and Statehouse will take no stand
While a whole generation is butchered and damned
Did they send out their thoughts
Did they send out their prayers
Did they tell your classmates how everyone cares
Did they give you a page in the year book
Did anyone do anything for the life that they took?
And I can't help but wonder Matilda McBride
Do any who lie here know why they died
Did we really believe them when they say that they care
Do they think that we are so unaware
That the suffering, the sorrow, the fear and the pain
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Tilly McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again
Did they send out their thoughts
Did they send out their prayers
Did they tell your classmates how everyone cares
Did they give you a page in the year book
Did anyone do anything for the life that they took?
***
(If you're wondering, changing "Willy" to "Matilda/Tilly" was a conscious choice; not only to change the apparent gender, but also as a nod to "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda")
(If you're wondering, changing "Willy" to "Matilda/Tilly" was a conscious choice; not only to change the apparent gender, but also as a nod to "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda")
