Lyrics

from "The Birds of Ireland"

Frost
cakes the window
and beyond
the moon
seals the river
in a pane of ice.

How easy to imagine
that the drowned
can go no farther:
that their eyes
the color of river
watch
the same moon mine do.

When I turn
to the living
room again
and hear
wind screech
in the tiny chimney
I listen to them
reassemble:
fingers like mine
arms stuck
akimbo, unable
to continue
some imagined
journey seaward--
frozen
below the ice
plateau where storm
sounds to reawakened
ears like hum
solitude, home.

Famine Ship

In the end we’d grown desperate, having for our only meal
A handful of Peel’s brimstone and whatever we could steal
My husband left us at the workhouse door, and the child growing weak
I staggered the road down to Dublin, the famine ships to seek

Chorus

Now the sails of the famine ship swell like the white shirt on a well-fed lord
And the sea’s hunger knows no end, swallows down the dead we send overboard

I passed before the Custom House to join the queue of wretches there
Where I’d heard Neptune is carved in stone and banishes famine and despair
The boat smelled of sugar and molasses from its West Indies port of call
But crammed with its human cargo there was no sweetness anymore

Chorus

Bridge

And I dreamed that we landed in Baltimore
And my cousin was waving on shore
And there was no need to cry anymore, and the child smiling

Now the fever’s taken twenty and there’ll be more before it’s through
But if it comes for my Catherine well then the sea will have me, too

Chorus

(And I curse the ones who’ve made us weep
whose only care is how to keep their golden hord)