Lament For Brendan Behan

Word has come from Dublin City
Word has come to our town
Word has come from Dublin City
They tell me bold Brendan is dead

Born in ‘twentythree in a slum in Dublin
With a tenement over his head
Born with a spirit his flesh could not contain
They tell me bold Brendan is dead

He died at the Meath in far off Dublin
In a cold white hospital bed
In the Georgian tenements the children hushed their singing
They know that bold Brendan is dead

No stranger to life, he lived right enough
No stranger to the glass in his hand
No stranger to the cause he fought all his life
Yet they tell me bold Brendan is dead

Ireland has lost her sweet angry singer
No longer his poems of fine design
Will ring out in Gaelic or sound through the lanes
For alas! bold Brendan is dead