The Moth and the Candle

A symbol it is of times past, gone and forgotten
A symbol of a once mighty empire now well in decline
On an everyday thing, a pillar, hah, of the community
Its inscription is of a king now foreign, of a queen
Whose descendants became the executors of an empires demise
Bore witness to the effects of the disease of freedom
The cancer of independence, or so they see it
An icon with ordinary utility, overlain with the colour of nationalism
Overlain I say and yet not obliterated by it
As one might expect. Or maybe not as this Irish psyche
Retains that insufferable ideology of the tugged forelock
The bent knee and the bowed head
The agenda of the submissive, of the weak-willed and the whipped
No need to supplant the state for the empire
To expropriate the symbols and signs of a history long dead
A history that lies hidden beneath our hands and feet
Such imperialist icons must be shown, be exposed for what they are
Hiding beneath a carpace of hope and paint
Demonstrates manifest laziness or perhaps something more sinister?
Either way neither serves the past or its people
So then, to recast the metal of memory? No
For that would bring distortion and serve the desires of the present
And destroy the needs of the past