Fluttering Handkerchiefs

Just a bare field with a huddle of boulders:

But locals who have always known where it is

Take you there, show you around, tell you how people made

Their way from glen, mountain, valley, and workhouse,

Slowly moving, homeless and destitute, turning their backs

On cabin, hovel and holding, carrying what they could,

Abandoning what they had known, cottage and street,

Haggard and turf stack, wake and wedding, turning

Their faces to the south, seeking passage to the west,

The piece of earth in their pockets. In their heads

The memory of handkerchiefs waving on platforms.

And during the war thousands hastened from cities,

From bombs, bombardment, starvation and savagery,

Streamed away, desperate and determined,

Strafed and harassed, with bundles on their backs,

In carts, handcarts and bicycles, hauling the old and the sick.

We thought we would never see the like again.

But once again people are fleeing persecution,

Taking a desperate decision to leave the life

They know to find a better life, to get ahead,

The West’s gift seen on screen, described

In letters, enticements from relatives

And friends to join them in cities far away.

So they embark, pay the traffickers, go

From country to country, persist, endure

Through good days and bad, traverse

Mountain trails, cross stream and river,

Pay the boatmen, are bundled into rubber

Dinghies, people who do not know the sea,

Overcrowded, unsafe, yet they gather

Old, young, children, babies, take

To the treacherous waters, boats

Are lost in the darkness, boats are

Abandoned, bodies wash up on islands,

A little boy alone on a beach, stretched in death.

We close doors in their faces, erect barriers,

Create borders, put them in camps, muddy, insanitary.

We in the West, fearing and hiding the memory,

The ups and downs of every country, every people,

Forget white handkerchiefs fluttering at rural stations.

Maurice Harmon's collections include When Love is Not Enough: New and Selected Poems (Salmon). He has also published many critical studies of contemporary Irish writing.