My Dark Fathers

My dark fathers lived the intolerable day Committed always to the night of wrong, Stiffened at the hearthstone, the woman lay, Perished feet nailed to her man’s breastbone. Grim houses beckoned in the swelling gloom Of Munster fields where the Atlantic night Fettered the child within the pit of doom, And everywhere a going down of light. And yet up the sandy Kerry shore The woman once had danced at ebbing tide Because she loved flute music – and still more Because a lady wondered at the pride Of one so humble. That was long before The green plant withered by an evil chance; When winds of hunger howled at every door She heard the music dwindle and forgot the dance. Such mercy as the wolf receives was hers Whose dance became a rhythm in a grave, Achieved beneath the thorny savage furze That yellowed fiercely in a mountain cave. Immune to pity, she, whose crime was love, Crouched, shivered, searched the threatening sky, Discovered ready signs, compelled to move Her to her innocent appalling cry. Skeletoned in darkness, my dark fathers lay Unknown, and could not understand The giant grief that trampled night and day, The awful absence, moping the land. Upon the headland, the encroaching sea Left sand that hardened after tides of Spring, No dancing feet disturbed its symmetry And those who loved good music ceased to sing. Since every moment of the clock Accumulates to form a final name, Since I am come of Kerry clay and rock, I celebrate the darkness and the shame That could compel a man to turn his face Against the wall, withdrawn from light so strong And undeceiving, spancelled in a place Of un applauding hands and broken song.