Poetry: Chay Bowes

Three Miles South of Carlow Town

Walk with me. Don’t speak.
Come to the place where the walls and stones
Yield their shameful secrets.
Listen. Listen.

Stand and hear the black earth shifting,
As she did then, to deny him his succour,
And as she did when he slipped into her inky embrace.

Three miles south of Carlow town.
In the Lea of the silver stones,
Latched together when we had the strength,
That small hollow where we submit.
Where a whispering call gave way,
To a silent deafening tide,
And where we fade into the geography,
Of this holy ancient place.

This inky earth,
Thick with the toils of a thousand years,
Will now gladly hold this pale handed child,
In its dark embrace.
Only the hunger of the earth
Surpasses that of her children.

Three miles south of Carlow town,
A Holocaust reflected in the silent slate grey sky,
The amputation of all kindness screamed,
In a lone mother’s last breathless farewell;
“Golden haired child,
Son of the earth and wind itself.
The black turf is no cradle,
The rush and reed no shawl”

Come walk with me.
Don’t speak.
Come to the place where the walls and stones yield their secrets.

There is buried treasure three miles south of Carlow Town.
Listen. Listen.

Feature Image: Dublin Street, Carlow c. 1900.