Michael McGuiness, Civil War Soldier

Wexford Pikeman, 1798

It was with the smoked Irish in Chandler that I lived alone in a shack by the railway

but I come from the shadow of the Wicklow mountains and the pikemen of ‘98.

I fought four full year in your bleeding Civil War.

We were the Fighting Irish, all we'd ever owned was war,

we toughened our hide under the the British boot—did it three hundred year.

They wanted to slave us like the black men in the South,

wanted us to wear the fecking yoke of bondage.

America should be the land where no man has to bow

but passing through New York and Chicago,

I read signs said "No dogs or Irishmen.”

With the Illini went down to Dixieland, saw the black folk,

rag-tattered shoeless hungry like the Old Country. 

That's what we had faith in, the doing of it, divil a bit of God. Sod God, as the Fenians said. 

I four year I fought-- with the 16th Illinois and then the 60th--powder burned me face, me eyes.

In Kansas broke sod and split stone to build the railway, rail-laying Irish like meself and former slaves, 

stopping our gob with Chinese grub.

Came to Chandler looking for land but was too old for sod busting,

got an invalid pension of $12 a month, sent it to me darling Jennie.

Folk laughed at me cause whenever I went to town

I carried all my ruck on my back, never knowing if I'd return.

At last I bivouacked with the dead, and the G. A. R. paid a dollar for me plot.

The newspaper called me a harmless old man 

and said my lonely death had touched many a folk 

too busy during me life to give a damn.

Ah shur and that was the grandest thing anybody ever wrote.

Author’s note: Michael McGuiness died in Chandler OK in 1901. The image is a memorial statue of a Wexford Pikeman carved with the year 1798. I was assisted with the diction of this poem by my Irish friend David Brennan, poet, musician, novelist, and Tokyo street busker.