The Last Post (Office)  – A Lament for Rural Ireland.

Decades of service year after year

But they shrug their shoulders, they don’t really care

Our pleas and petitions have fallen on deaf ears

They will not listen to our anguish and fears

Those suits in Dublin, those number crunchers

Balance and spreadsheets, figures and numbers  

Rows and columns, accounts and financial advisers

In this corporate world, this is all that matters

Like a blight, it’s shadow creeps across the land

Slowly strangling life in rural Ireland

A struggle and battle we can not win

Just one more nail in the community’s coffin

No transport, no pubs, no post office or bank

Those politicians we trusted, we have to thank

The time has come, retirement day

The clock on the wall counts the hours away

Years of service must come to an end

She will not be forgotten but remembered as a friend

She will not be forgotten nor will she forget

Memories of her customers and people she met

The gossip, the news, the laughter and tears

The memories echo down through the years

Of happy customers and the friends she made

Memories like these will never fade

The lights are extinguished, the shutters come down

The evening light fades in a small rural town

As she turns the key and walks away

The end of an era,  just another sad day.

C Denis Murphy 26 February 2019..

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