Strands Converging – In-Between Two Worlds

Connemara with the The Twelve Bens (Irish: Na Beanna Beola)

Barefoot in Connemara

Bow as the invader bangs the war drum
downward along Central St., offer an olive
branch to the soldier who kills the living,
steals the land, claiming mine —

Stay, stay even as you feel abandoned, torn
into the currents descending in the Cathedral of Wells —
the Tao filled darkness of Connemara
is heard in the heart of Godot —

Remember the tramp outside the Swan-Inn wrapped in his
stained wool blanket pleading, don’t stare at me,
his sheared loneliness blending
into the coarser blades of sodden grass

that were mixed with the eyeless rotten potatoes¹,
that foul fetid food that stalked-up the swollen souls
as they fell in their walking death along
the Doolough valley istigh an Gorta Mór^2.

Stillbow of Mercy rising over the river of hungry words
crossing slab-graves on a wounded journey —
It’s brown-bog-currents pouring forgiveness
into spawning evening pools amidst wild heather
where the humblest – the poor are washed tenderly
barefoot in the pure water of the most Holy God.

¹“Rotten potatoes and seaweed, or even grass, properly mixed, afforded a very wholesome and nutritious food. All knew that Irishmen could live upon anything and there was plenty of grass in the field though the potato crop should fail.”

– The Duke of Cambridge, January 1846

²Doolough valley – The Doolough tragedy is where one of the many wrenching episodes occurred in Ireland istigh an Gorta Mór (inside the Great Hunger 1845–1852). The tragedy occurred on 30th March 1849. To qualify for famine relief several hundred hungry and destitute people were compelled to walk through the night in bitter weather from Louisburgh to reach Delphi Lodge in County Mayo by 7AM next morning. The exact figure of the numbers who died along the way remain unknown. One ‘official’ figure placed the number as low as twenty, an unofficial figure estimated a high of six hundred. The next day, the scene was described as a trail of corpses.