1.

the stink of famine

hangs in the bushes still

in the sad celtic hedges

 

you can catch it

down the line of our landscape

get its taste on every meal

 

listen

there is famine in our music

 

famine behind our faces

 

it is only a field away

has made us all immigrants

guilty for having survived

 

has separated us from language

cut us from our culture

built blocks around belief

 

left us on our own

 

ashamed to be seen

walking out beauty so

honoured by our ancestors

 

but fostered now to peasants

the drivers of motorway diggers

unearthing bones by accident

under the disappearing hills

– Desmond Egan