by Gifford Savage
If Sinéad was here she would call out the fakery,
false flattery, fickle bleeding-heart eulogies.
See straight through the fawning hypocrisy.
Where were we all when she needed us to stand
with her, for her, beside her?
When Sinatra and the old guard condemned her,
and the self-styled Madonna spurned her?
What did you say when Dylan fans booed her in ’92,
did you speak out then?
Dylan fans, though, have a history
of resisting the winds of change.
Perhaps the hopes and dreams of a generation
died along with JFK—
or were buried at the Lorraine Hotel
in Memphis Tennessee?
Maybe this slight figure with the voice of an angel
was an unwelcome reminder,
that they’d sold out to ‘The Man’ in the end?
But those Dylan fans are no different from all the rest.
A crowd, of course, is untameable, unpredictable.
Hailing heroes one moment,
only to crucify them the next
then declare their undying love for the dead.
She would have hated the herd mentality,
for she walked the narrow road
through stones that never broke her bones,
but surely pierced her hurting heart.
So we assuage our guilt or jump the bandwagon
with our social-media posts of googled facts,
our YouTube shares
our limpid lamentations.
We didn’t deserve her—any of us.
But we mourn and miss her
this fragile lioness of truth.
Too late now to tell her she is loved,
to leave futile bouquets of flowers.
She can no longer hear us.
But we need more than ever, to listen to her.
Dylan fans, though, have a history
of resisting the winds of change.
Perhaps the hopes and dreams of a generation
died along with JFK—
or were buried at the Lorraine Hotel
in Memphis Tennessee?
Maybe this slight figure with the voice of an angel
was an unwelcome reminder,
that they’d sold out to ‘The Man’ in the end?
But those Dylan fans are no different from all the rest.
A crowd, of course, is untameable, unpredictable.
Hailing heroes one moment,
only to crucify them the next
then declare their undying love for the dead.
She would have hated the herd mentality,
for she walked the narrow road
through stones that never broke her bones,
but surely pierced her hurting heart.
So we assuage our guilt or jump the bandwagon
with our social-media posts of googled facts,
our YouTube shares
our limpid lamentations.
We didn’t deserve her—any of us.
But we mourn and miss her
this fragile lioness of truth.
Too late now to tell her she is loved,
to leave futile bouquets of flowers.
She can no longer hear us.
But we need more than ever, to listen to her.
Gifford Savage is from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals including The Storms, The Bangor Literary Journal, Agape Review, and previously in The New Verse News. He won the Aspects Festival Poetry Slam 2022.