Niall OConnor: Squares

Olga Yakimovich/Reuters) Kiev

In Tiananmen, in Cairo, in Hong Kong,

injustice draws the buried from their graves,

inciting us to cry: 'You have gone too far.

Our bleeding bodies can bear no more.'

Public spaces of all shapes and sizes,

overlooked by commerce, monument and greed,

designed as great imperial statements,

clearings laid out on the powdered bones of
displaced city dwellers buried,
forgotten, but now risen again.

The State must impress to oppress.

And it is here we have chosen to repossess
our lives by dying, if necessary.

Here we will reinvigorate our unborn by blood sacrifice.

Here we will stand for our freedom.

With barricades of stone and bone,

with tactics learned by observation,

we answer you with your own weapons;
a stone for a stone,
a brick for a brick,
a bullet for a bullet?

In every city of the world,

rulers quake and look to their once silent
people, and seek to redesign open spaces:

New facades for Independent Square.

Corrals and trees for Freedom Plaza.

Car parks on Tahrir Square.

They do not see it is too little, too late.

In the open spaces of the peoples' net,

we pulse with new found freedoms,

ubiquitous in our reach,

we seek to reunite the human spirit.

Niall OConnor