SEEKING ROOTS



After signing, my stroll takes in the tombs:

headstones of Victorian gentry

lying, untended, along moss-grown paths.

Their laments leap at me; testify

to an epitaph of inadequacy. 



By way of stale silence I reach the road,

and looking back on subjects loyal,

hindsight dissolves in forgotten whispers

of smoke: our railways in sweated toil,

brogue built by ancestors from another soil.

  

1987

No comments:

Post a Comment