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THE SIGN
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Eric Bogle
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"The Sign"
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-Eric Bogle
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In the summer of last year, in a city* far from here
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That stands on the shores of the fair Pacific sea
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I walked it's pleasant streets, no view in mind, no one to meet
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Content to wander where my aimless feet led me
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A few streets from my hotel, I passed an old stone wall
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Where three words had been scrawled by an unknown hand
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When I read them I stopped dead, in disbelief I shook my head
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For the words on that wall read, "Free Bobby Sands"
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As the sun began to fall, and the day began to die
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Thought I heard the wild geese call, from a dark and empty sky
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For long minutes I stood there, in that busy thoroughfare
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While the past rose sharp and clear in my mind's eye
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I saw it all again, the passion, hate, and pain
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The indifference and the shame as a young man died
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But it was all so long ago, and who now cares or knows
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Why Bobby Sands chose his lonely death?
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But to the one who wrote that sign,
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It seems that Bobby's light still shines
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The words rang from another time,
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But the paint was fresh
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As the sun began to fall, and the day began to die
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Thought I heard the wild geese call, from a dark and empty sky
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So I went down to the sea, to let it's wild song comfort me
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But my thoughts would not let me be, and unchecked they ran
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Through my future, present, and past,
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Not for the first time nor the last
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I heard them ask, "Could you be the kind of man
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Who would gladly sacrifice everything, even life
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And put no price on a cause, or an ideal?"
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No answer echoed in my heart, so I turned and I walked back
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Through the twilight's deepening dark, to my hotel.
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****************
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Historical Note:
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Bobby Sands, MP, was imprisoned in 1981 under criminal charges
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Stemming from his alleged involvement in IRA terrorist activities
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In Ulster Province (Northern Ireland). Mr. Sands, along with
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20 other alleged IRA members in prison awaiting trial, went
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On a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions in the prison, and to
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Have the IRA members reclassified as "political prisoners".
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The hunger strike lasted more than 60 days, resulting in the deaths
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Of many of the prisoners, of which Mr. Sands was the first to succumb.
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*Auckland, New Zealand
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