B'ANSEO AN SCARADH - Poem

 

B'ANSEO AN SCARADH
 

Your great, great, great grandpa
Lived in a world without cars
Without planes, without electricity,
There were no computers, radio
or television to tell him what to feel,
There was the only the need to go on
 
B'anseo an scaradh
This was the separation
The point where hunched backs
Went on up the road
To the top of the gap
And disappeared, forever
 
You are getting on a plane,
It is, and is not, the same
Because you will call us,
Our phones will buzz with
Your texts for more money,
You will come back, eventually
 
B'anseo an scaradh
This was the separation
The point where hunched backs
Went on up the road
To the top of the gap
And disappeared, forever
 
We live in a world
in which "forever"
is an exaggeration,
An exclamation point
Meant to guilt someone
Into coming back, again
 
B'anseo an scaradh
This was the separation
The point where hunched backs
Went on up the road
To the top of the gap
And disappeared, forever
 
His mother returned to this spot
Every year for a decade
As if she would will him back down
The winding dirt road to the bridge,
On the way she passed others,
Hunched backs burning their eyes
 
B'anseo an scaradh
This was the separation
The point where hunched backs
Went on up the road
To the top of the Gap
And disappeared, forever
 
The other side of the Gap
He passed the Pig’s Back
And went into Derry,
Two weeks in the dead hold,
And he spilled out
Into wide open possible
 
B’anseo an scaradh
This was the separation
The point where hunched backs
Went up the road
To the top of the Gap
And disappeared, forever
 
And he never came back
Each step took him farther away
Across an empty unbelievable
In the place of his birth
On the far side of the bridge
B'anseo an scaradh
 
B’anseo an scaradh
This was the separation
The point where hunched backs
Went up the road
To the top of the Gap
And disappeared, forever.

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