"The curlew stood silent and unseen In the long damp grass And he looked down on the road below him That wound its way through Beal Na mBlath And he heard the young men shouting and cursing Running backwards and forwards Dodging and weaving and ducking the bullets>br>That rained down on them From the hillside opposite. Just as quickly as it started the firing stopped And a terrible silence hung over the valley A lone figure lay on the roadside In the drizzling August rain Dressed in green cape coat, leggings, And brown hobnail boots That would never again Set the sparks flying from the kitchen flagstones As he danced his way through a half-set/ A hurried whispered act of contrition And the firing breaks out again The curlew takes to flight And as he flies out over the empty sad fields of West Cork With his lonesome call He must tell the world That the Big Fellow has fallen And that Michael is gone."