If you were buried in Faulmore
You’d have no need of heaven
You’d have to say
You were already there
A place of mountain sea and sky
Shining sun at evening
O how happy just to lie
Now no sense of grieving
But beauty by itself we know
Won’t put food on the table
And Irish men just had to go
Wherever they were able
And building sites in Britain
And always on the road
Earning a crust before you’re dust
Carrying a heavy load
And the load wasn’t just bricks you know
There’s a thing the heavy heart
And lonely days in nowhere
Having got the start
A man’s sad look stares out at me
His life is almost spent
He left his home in Ireland
And never pitched his tent
Brian Fahy
11 September 2021
+ At breakfast time I take my tea and ‘read the papers’ from my computer. Today I saw a picture of the cemetery at Faulmore in all its wistful beauty, and I read a piece on the RTE website about the Irish Diaspora, by Gillian O’Brien. In it she shows us a photograph, the haunting face of Don McCullin’s Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London, 1970. And so, my poem.
Erris Poetry 