The Transmigration of Souls

 

On a hillside facing the ocean, two houses;

One emptied by potato blight and Famine

Years ago, now  tumbledown and fading

Back into the rock. That family all went West,

Dreaming of golden dawns, or died green-mouthed

From eating grass. The other house stands boldly

White-faced in the moonlight, empty-eyed

These twenty years; all but one of the men

Went East to England to build motorways.

A bachelor stayed to farm the patch,

To grow old, to weep at songs of emigrants

In far Amerikay, to die alone dreaming

Of childhood, reaching  for a cigarette.

Seventy sleepers suffocated in a supermarket van,

Mothers among them, but check out the walkers

Fit for work! Gang -masters relax! The desperate

Drive no hard bargains. Dreamers always die

Before someone else’s dawn. isn’t that the way

Of it? Drowned babies may roll like pebbles

On the beach, but surely there was a life

That could be worse? Spores of greed blight

The dreaming tree and rot it to the root.

March on migrants by the light of the silver moon,

When every falsehood casts a shadow of belief,

March on into cities where the streets are paved

With gold and where the dead send letters home.

March on  those cold citadels who sent birds

Of fire to scorch your feet and to scourge

Your generation.