Introduction
The Irish housing crisis is so acute it has led to university students spending the first week of term sleeping rough in the university grounds in the hope that something turns up in terms of accommodation. In May 2018 there were 3,826 children in emergency homeless accommodation. In every major Irish town there are a good number of people sleeping on the street which was never previously the case. The causes are simple enough: hardly any houses have been built since the economic crash of 2008 when the Irish construction industry collapsed, with tens of thousands of construction workers being forced to seek work abroad; and though the deny it, the very much right of centre Irish government is ideologically opposed to the building of large numbers of council houses – an essential component to any solution to this crisis.
What Put The Diamonds In Your Owner’s Wife’s Ears?
after Bertolt Brecht
You clean collared columnists
should first help us fix the basic roof-over-head
dilemma, before penning your next sermon.
You shower, who preach careful now
and always know your own exact bank balance,
what is this mature democracy towards which you sweat?
Without a door I can safely lock behind me
to keep your pity at bay, civilisation
doesn’t even begin.
First bring those of us who get by on Supermacs
each our own mahogany table and a big, silver knife
with which to cut the turkey and ham into manageable slices
(with a vegetarian option for those so afflicted)
and answer us this:
What put the diamonds in your owner’s wife’s ears?
Or the Prince Albert ring in her boyfriend’s willy?
The fact you’re in there polishing phrases
and we’re out here in the undemocratic rain
which everyone – from the Primate of the Church of Ireland
to the Council for the Women of Consequence – agrees
must never be allowed land on you,
this is what keeps pinning diamonds
to your owner’s wife’s sad little lobes,
and puts the ring that winks up at her
in her boyfriend’s knob.
Image from here