To Escape the Famine

 

To Escape the Famine

“To escape the famine, they would have to survive the journey.”

You can’t look in their eyes.

They wouldn’t see you, anyway.

Starving isolates.

Slow death is solitary.

The soul tastes failure.

The body walks away,

Silent, dreamless, empty-armed

Meager human cargo,

Leaving sweet grassy hills

Where wander sheep and cattle

For a dark ship’s hold,

Leaving fields of grain,

Rich gardens full of plump vegetation,

For a voyage through hell.

Epic failure reeked

To the heavens with money

Harvested from land

Rid of its people:

Systemic ethnic cleansing

Blighted Ireland.

Potatoes rotted

Everywhere in Europe,

Yet peasants survived.

The occupying forces

In Ireland rallied God’s cause,

Called the blight a sign

That land must be cleared.

Die, endure prison, or leave.

And the world stood by.

Human cargo–ballast–

Remaindered hungry souls

Boarded coffin ships.

Humanity streamed

Westward, claimed America

On mere crumbs of chance.

A hateful world watches

Hungry people work and dream

And build a new land.

One and one-half million

Out of three million Irish,

Gone.

The EPIC placard

On the Dublin city bus

Pictures a potato:

“This is not who we are”

The placard says.  The hurt burns.

It is who the Irish are.

World travelers ride the bus

With local people at home

Where the Irish fought back.

Poets and teachers,

Trade unionists, and middle-class Prods

Who would keep their home.

How could they do it,

If India could not,

Asked Kevin, newly arrived 

From India.

An economics degree

Packed with his introduction

And British accent.

They were teachers and poets;

They knew how to love.

Poets and teachers.

How could the Irish

Do what India could not?

We are not potatoes.

The Collins Barracks Courtyard,

A space embrace by strong walls

That house a museum,

And here is thunderstruck

Kevin.  Across the river,

Another British barracks

Is also a museum.

Across the road there,

A prison

Where died the 13 poets,

Teachers, and trade unionists 

Who claimed Ireland’s freedom.

Martyrs to the well-dreamed

Confluence of beauty and freedom

And their songs.

At Kilmainham Gaol,

And beside the Jeanie Johnston,

Heartache cast in bronze:

Monuments to horror,

Dignity’s power to prevail

Over meanness, hate.

How could they do it?

They are not potatoes.