Workers' Liberty

EIREANNACH!*
(After reading Lecky's
History of Ireland)

What is it then, the Irishness
Fate laid on me in this largess,
That in me never gave its ground
Through forty years, core-wound
Inside me, still to survive,
Indelible, bone-deep, alive?

A world I lost I scarcely knew,
The childhood land I never outgrew,
My father's life, my mother's tales
Of hungers, wars, workhouses, jails:
The memories not quite my own,
To which my memories are sewn.

Inextricably in Erin's net,
I am what I refuse to forget.