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Cry, Annie, Cry!

Cry, Annie, cry!

Cold in the grave full of secrets watered in pain

I wonder do they see you as I see the woman

Named Annie, birthed from the stomach of a starved lioness

 

Cry, Annie, cry

Scream out your suffering to a world asking why?

No longer a place where your anguish is misunderstood

 

Annie

Did your tears stop

On the day that you died?

 

Clare Kinnaird, 2025. 

 

 

 

🌷(4)

◄ The Unravelling.

Comments

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Flyntland

Sun 23rd Feb 2025 15:13

Clare, what a story I am so glad I asked.

People were treated like animals, cruelty was the norm, and pity from anywhere was in very short supply. I am ashamed to say that we (the English) while not alone, were among the worst offenders. We owned them, took their land, and offered nothing.

Women were mere pawns, to be used but not supported, they were expendable. The resulting babies were their fault and their responsibility - Oh! how they must have suffered

The church did not come out well either - women who could not support their babies were forced to give them up and then sent on their way to manage as best they could.

This was even happening in living memory - the shame of having a baby out of wedlock was such that the mother was expected to give up her child before going home to her family.

A comparatively recent discovery of an Irish Convent Cemetery full of unidentified babies and small children in unmarked graves, and covering many years, was a testament to the tragic loss of young lives in mass care.

Times have changed - children count and help is available, in one form or another, to keep families together.

Your poem and its meaning are important - those days should not be swept under the carpet but used as an example not to make such mistakes again and to move on with compassion.

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Hélène

Sun 23rd Feb 2025 14:07

Omg Clare. Thanks for the back story. Your poem (combined w/ the back story) sounds like ancestral healing to me. This is heavy stuff. Amazing. Thanks for your brave sharing. What an inspiration. I daresay Annie (wherever her consciousness may or may not be?) is deeply appreciative of your words.

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Clare

Sun 23rd Feb 2025 13:38

Thank you, Flyntland, for asking about this. It makes the poet in me happy to hear that someone picked up on the mood of the poem. Annie was my grandmother. Born in Ireland in the early 1900s to an itinerant family, she lived a life of hardship that was familiar to many Irish people at the time. The end of the Irish famine (1845-1852) preceded her birth by 50 years, and the country was still recovering from the devastation. Alongside this, Ireland was struggling for independence from the British state. Annie found herself single and pregnant in her early 20s, and as was the norm for many in her position, she was forced into a mother and baby home. To cut a long, long story short, Annie’s child died in the home, and she was accused of infanticide; she was eventually found innocent, with the sudden death being attributed to the appalling living conditions at the home. (The home had no running water or electricity). Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. Annie went on to marry and continued life on the road with her husband and several children. Her husband died aged 46, leaving her pregnant and alone with an estimated 14 young mouths to feed. Annie felt she had no option but to abandon her children and flee to England in search of a better life. Sadly, life got harder, and she found herself living in a disused railway cabin with her newborn child, while the children left behind were placed into convents and priest homes, where they remained into adulthood. It is an extremely long and convoluted biography, but hopefully I have managed to provide some context for my poem.

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Flyntland

Sun 23rd Feb 2025 12:06

I can't pretend to understand this poem but there is something stark and urgent about it, I find it disturbing,
I can't read it and ignore it, I need to know the background to it.

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