Mankind’s Colonization Rhyme - Brian McSweeney

[Larry Robinson]

Mankind’s Colonization Rhyme


Enscripted on the gates of the English colony town
of Bandon, Ireland in 1600:

"Entrance to Jew, Turk or Atheist;
but Death to Ye Bloody Papists".

At least these English colonists,
Determined Protestants, were rhyming racists.
Now a Papist was a Catholic
And the Irish Catholic were Native Gaelic.
Eire their land was their goddess mother
As it was to their Native American brother.
Both stood in the way of manifest destiny
But their land a jewel in the crown of hegemony,
A jingle in the coffers of the civilized,
Whose greed their deaths contrived.
Who took the land they desired
Because guns made them deserv-ed.
They were the strongest, wisest, fittest;
Morality guides the superior race-ist.
So what better for the vermin,
The uncouth heathens thick with sin,
Than civilization’s icon smack in their eye
To become English or American, better die.

	- Brian McSweeney