The Irish Famine Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Gaunt cheeked, spindle-limbed
This exclamation mark of life-sized famine sculptures
Frozen in time, pull you up to a full stop
On their way to the coffin ships on Dublin’s Quay.

They carry dying children in their arms,
Themselves half dead, dogged by a skeletal cur
That waits to devour the stragglers
The comma of its tail wags in anticipation

They have left behind their blighted, rotting crops
Where the smoking turf of their rooves
Still blackens the sky, like a question-mark to their God
To face the horrors of the coffin ships
Typhus, cholera, lice
And the fierce Atlantic with its teeth of water
Exacting a heavy tithe from those who cross it

‘To be sure’ the guide from the good ship Jeanie Johnston
Says in passing, ‘Doesn’t your heart go out
To those poor souls fleeing Africa today,
And not a country keen to take them on? ’