Let Us Stand

Here they come, our tiniest unnursed,
without a single cry.
Not like the moments when at first
their lives met with the light.

Denied by church and family names
on initial newborn breaths,
their mothers smeared in sin and shame
ensured their graveless deaths.
The living marked by illrepute,
in servitude kept hidden;
a purgatory of hobnailed boots,
suffer little children.

Damned for trespass, stuff of nonsense,
by those who had committed worse,
branded fit or not for auction
and stamped firmly with a curse.
How could they know the order,
they were born without being versed.
And now they rise, here they come,
our tiniest unnursed.

Solemnity must them surround,
and the mothers who still mourn,
a ceremony wrong way round
as bones are upward borne.
We'll all be waiting, bated breath,
but for those who heard the cries
it's been a kind of living death,
though they made it out alive.

Let us stand, in guard of honour,
to indignity reverse,
that we all may be the stronger
for our tiniest to nurse.

(A hero of our time, Catherine Corless, a historian from Co. Galway in Ireland, brought information into the public domain about the cover-up of the burial of nearly 800 children in a disused septic tank in Tuam. The former site of one of Ireland's shameful Mother And Baby homes run by the Bon Secours nuns will be formally examined this year, 2019.

Click here for an article about how it was Catherine Corless who discovered there were 796 children's remains at the site. 
Click here for another article.)

The Double-Cross

We could put the world to rights
while the children swim.
Neither split the darks and lights
nor changed our loyal spin.
There were significant discussions
about ground spikes, pegs and space,
and the expected repercussions
of a sand-filled parasol base.
And what of Irish weather,
of its quirks and irks and blame,
of its making us feel clever
when we'd played it at its game.
The key hot press minutiae,
the heavy towels that goad,
the rule of washing every day
regardless of the load.
Radiators for heat only;
wet windows a disaster,
but such noble ideology
did not make the clothes dry faster.

The children went on mid-term,
and while we've been apart
I've double-crossed my laundry partner
by following my heart.
I was led by lust and not by love,
a slave to my desire.
I am now a daily user of
a condenser tumble-dryer.

(This poem is about me and my friend, René Murray, a fellow homeschooler. We honestly did talk a lot about the washing! And I was just a little bit afraid that the acquisition of the tumble dryer would result in us having nothing to talk about;). I am happy to report that there is still plenty of chat. Now my fears are about the next electricity bill).