A Voice from an Unmarked Grave – Luke Silke

‘Twas in the year of ’45, few were destined to survive,

The spuds they did rot, nothing was left for the pot,

My mother she was crying, although still trying,

To make a potato cake.

Oh, the fears I did get from those tears

In her eye, ’twas the first time that I,

Saw her cry.

 

 

My father he was back the land,

Digging with his hand,

Down in the mud – he searched hard but couldn’t find a spud.

I quote from he, what he said unto me;

“I dug up the pit, what I found isn’t fit”.

I ate a handful of maize grain but can’t bear the pain.

Once I asked for a small bit more – my stomach was sore.

Daddy did scold me, ’twas then that he told me,

‘Pennies don’t pay for coffins’.

 

 

But black ’47 was the year I went to heaven.

It was inevitable that I died aged five, I could no longer stay alive.

Yes few did survive the Great Irish Famine of Eighteen and Forty-Five.

Make sure ’tis not forgotten – the time potatoes were rotten,

As the turf and hay you save you stand upon my unmarked grave.

 

 

A mother’s cry polluted the stink, stale, death-filled atmosphere,

A father’s tear hit the lid of my coffin as he gently lowered me down here.

The neighbours all gathered – those who were fit,

In Cleary’s Lisheen, all around the bear hawthorn tree,

They shoved the clay o’er the edge of the hole and buried me.

Me a boy of five years what a shame,

To be forgotten today without even a name.

 

 

‘Twas a cold December day, frost upon the ground,

Cloondahamper was an awful place, silent without a sound.

The smell of burning turf and smoke as strangers wandered on the road.

Seldom they spoke, just carried their heavy load.

 

 

So as you go your way, some 150 years from that day,

Do bow your head and pray for the likes of me beneath the clay.

As the turf and hay you save, you work upon my unmarked grave.

Consider yourself blest with a life of the best,

and I laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

 

 

An old wise man once said;

“There’s not a field in Ireland where there aren’t famine dead”.

 

 

 

I Wrote this on the Back of a Box of Cigarettes and I Bored – Luke Silke

The train rolls,
Somewhere between Galway and Dublin,
The sun and sky heavy,
And I bored and melted within.

 
Somewhere between beauty and concrete.
The Fox Gloves slipping from the slope of stones,
Nothing green – all scorched and yellow.
People with accents on their phones.
The furze bushes of the midland planes.

 

The yellow flower – the name I forget
– cattle die if they eat it – wilting.
The hierarchy of nature.
The sun more powerful than the flower.
The flower more powerful than the cow.
The water, or lack of it, has power too.

 

We pass the golf course where rich people play,
But I’ll write this – on the back of my Blue Camels – for pay.
The hierarchy of nature. God at the top.
“Its been a month now we haven’t had a drop”.

 

Full carriage.

 

Patrick Kavanagh was better at this. But the angry, angry, angry sun is pelting it’s wrath on the railroad and bog.

Do you know who I am?

Three knocks on the door,
“Don’t answer that, its Maureen”
The young nun opens anyway,
“You signed the document, I cannot aid”
Sobs Sr Carmel, an 18-year-old maid.

The teenage nun closes the door on Maureen,
And Maureen screams;
“I just want to know where my baby is!”
“He’d be seven years old today”.

Later that night Sr Carmel sneaks out,
To the hospital where Maureen works,
She leaves an envelope with a name and address.

Later that week, Maureen drives east of Tuam,
and enquires as to the name and address,
enquires of a farm boy – his hair and clothes in a mess,
and then realises that’s who she’s after.

She turns the car and stares at him,
And drives into the sunset.
He puts the milking cows back in the shed,
Perplexed by the strange lady he met.
Maureen then hits for Holly Head.

That was nineteen and fifty eight,
She never came back,
That was her fate.
She married and had family,
But she never forgot her ordeal in Tuam.

On one September day,
Many years and miles away,
At the age of eighty seven,
She attended Mass in London.

On one September day,
Many years and miles away,
A sixty-year-old Irish farmer,
Boarded a plane in Knock.

Knock to Gatwick.
While he dodged his way through airports,
Maureen prayed to St Anthony,
On the last day of the novena,
Her son to see,
Before she went to heaven,
Terminally ill aged eighty and seven.

Having crossed over the foam,                                                                                                          He bought some flowers in a supermarket,
As his family over the phone,
– relayed directions.
She got out of a taxi and made herself tea,
Then tended to the roses.

Inside a small garden,
Behind an old rusty gate.
She prayed once again for an end to her wait.
A breeze blew the leaves,
As she takes from the roses,
The ripe rose hips.

She pretends she doesn’t notice,
The man up the road,
Diligently following google maps,
As he stares at her.
Until,
He is one side of the old rusty gate
and she the other.

Staring.
“Do you know me?” He asks.
“I knew you” she told,
“Since the moment you turned the corner at the end of the road”.

Knock Testimony

 

Testimony of Mrs. Mary O’Connell (nee Mary Byrne) respecting the apparition at Knock, Co. Mayo, 21st of August 1879.

About 8 o’clock on the evening on the 21st August, 1879, accompanied by a woman named Mary McLoughlin, housekeeper to the late Archdeacon Cavanagh P.P. I left my mother’s house to lock the church door – at the time it was my brother Dominick or some member of our family did this each evening. We had not travelled that far along the road leading from our house to the church when I noticed standing outside the south gable of the church what I took to be three white statues. I asked Miss. McLoughlin, when did he – meaning the Archdeacon – get the new statues. She answered, “I did not hear the priest say anything about these”. We were about a distance of 300 yards from the figures. At the time it was fairly bright daylight, although raining heavily. We moved on and came nearly opposite the gable. I saw the figures quite plainly. There was a bright light to the west side of the gable where they stood. The figure of the Blessed Virgin was in the centre, and appeared to be larger than that of St. Joseph or the one I thought was St. John the Evangelist.

The figure of the Blessed Virgin was that of a woman standing erect in the attitude of prayer, her eyes turned upwards, her hands were uplifted, so that the tips of her fingers were about on a level with the shoulders and the palms of her hands were turned slightly outwards. She wore a large cloak of a white colour, hanging loosely fully around the shoulders, and fastened at the neck. She wore a crown on the head, a rather large crown, and it appeared brighter than the dress or robes. The figure of St. Joseph appeared standing to the right of the Blessed Virgin, with head slightly bent and inclined – so to speak – towards the Blessed Virgin, with the hands clasped in the form of prayer. It represented the saint as somewhat with greyish hair and whiskers, and the face seemed to me to have a natural flesh-colour appearance.

The third figure which appeared to be St. John the Evangelist: – (I thought this from the close resemblance it bore to a statue of that saint which I had seen a short time before in the church at Lecanvey near Westport, the only difference I noticed was, the one at Lecanvey wore no mitre). He was partly turned away from the other figures, facing a plain white altar, like marble, and holding in his left hand, a large open book like a Mass book, the right hand raised in the attitude of a preacher. The index finger and the middle finger – the two only raised, with the two thumb leaning on those, the two other fingers compressed, as if he were forcibly explaining some point of doctrine. The Altar had no candles or linens, or an ornamentation of a special kind, but above the Altar and resting on it was the figure of a lamb, with its head towards St. John, thus fronting the western sky. I do not quite remember just now whether there was a cross on the body of the lamb. I also saw golden stars or small brilliant lights all around the gable, not stationery lights but like little stars flickering to and fro.

There was uncut meadow in the field where the church stood, and growing right up to the gable to a height of 1 1⁄2 to 2 feet. The lower part of the garments on the figures seemed to touch the grass. I could not see the feet.

When first I saw the strange sight, I rushed back home, and called my brother, Dominick, mother, sister and little niece. I then ran to Mrs. Campbell’s and my uncle Bryson Byrne’s house, and called these people. There would be twelve or fourteen people gathered in a few minutes, and who saw the apparition.

Standing at the schoolhouse the figures appeared to stand three or four feet out from the gable. When going closer up, say within a few feet, the figure seemed to move and stand up against the wall. I put out my hand and I found nothing, as I have already said it was raining heavily, with the wind from the south against the gable. No rain fell on the wall or near where the figures or Altar stood. The place seemed quite dry.

I remained looking at the figure from eight to about half past nine o’clock. Julia Campbell came running from her house saying her mother was dying. (This woman was ill for some time) We all went down to Mrs. Campbell’s and remained there for ten or fifteen minutes, and again returned to the church gable, the vision had at this time vanished. The place was quite dark and dark, and everything still save the beating of the raindrops. We waited for some minutes and then returned home, wondering what it all meant.
It is now past 50 years since I behold that beautiful vision, in memory I can see it as plainly today as I did as that eventful occasion.

 
Signed:
Mary O’Connell