Old lichen mottled headstones
Mark the graves of women and men,
Whose genocide sparked Ireland's
Freedom flame,
In their pallid hands
were shovels,
No schooling for a pen,
Fuelled by starving bellies
bow in shame.
Poverty stricken darkened days
of cruel and rampant blight,
The stench of rotten spuds
rose from the clay,
Cold families around a bleak turf fire
another hungry night,
Gaunt faces like potatoes
in decay.
A million sailed from homeland shores
Like wild absconding slaves,
In agony they fled to find relief,
And countless died on coffin ships
Then laid in watery graves,
Consumed by vile disease
And woeful grief.
But memory fades as time erodes
And youth won't recollect,
An hegemonic crown
That gorged on Irish grain,
Our ancestors the starving dead
Oppressed to genuflect,
Interred beneath cold seething clods,
Forgotten not their pain !