Today's poem is by Thomas McCarthy

Remembering the Great Famine
       

I love the way we've appropriated the precise
And particular suffering of the destitute poor —
This company director, a man no doubt sincere
And full of after-dinner goodwill, tells the first lies

Of this evening, saying how he needs to be
True to the suffering of his ancestors; and this
Chartered Accountant talks of his real distress
When he thinks of the same suffering. He

Says he wants to go down on his knees to pray,
Sometimes, when he thinks of his people
Falling by the West Cork wayside. Respectable
Persons in the best dinner-jackets pay

Such homage, and yet, I know, these two,
However slightly drunk and however wholly kind,
Have got their origins in a twist. I have a good mind
To recall their ancestors, to name the retinue

Of cattle dealers and high grade salt merchants
From whence they came. But I let bygones
Be bygones, even if my poems won't. My poems
Keep digging up the facts; how at the entrance

To Cork harbour, that late summer of Black '47,
A ship carrying tons of mutton, beef and pork
Departed for the London trade; how in the dark
The destitute were about what is market-driven

About Ireland, and how immoral our meat-trade.
We watched our own die so that our burgeois prospered.
Prosperity was only as good as how much the poor could bear —
What the poor suffered should be left to themselves instead.

Copyright © 2025 Thomas McCarthy All rights reserved
from Plenitude
Carcanet Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission