Member-only story
The Great Hunger
Dreams of a black country infect my sleep
Ragamuffin babies we cannot keep,
Everything is black, rotted, gone.
Everyday I dig down to the bone,
To the marrow-black foam on a dead man’s lips
black thoughts of the black cancers of the soul.
No home for me beneath the skeletal trees
God is a black star, in a black mood.
The animals mourn as we eat them
The black earth, Conemarra, is cursed,
Life and death are slow.
The sky in its vastness, the oceans of the deep.
Our children take their final sleep.
So many priests murdered by the British
Nobody to conduct an internment,
Cruelly beaten, by the land agents
We crumble into sleep.
Dawn on the black mountain freezes my jaw
hunger pangs throw me into a world of pain
Birds’ eggs, acorns, germ balls, black beetles. We have eaten them all.
We know the British have food
Soldiers taunt us with bread. The children cry.
