1. Hidden

leaving Melbourne
flying northwest
across desert
below
……….darkness
……….……….scattered lights

even in daylight
stories are hidden here
at night they call to us
singing across country
reaching into the sky

in this plane
……….we eat
……….……….watch a movie
……….……….……….try to sleep

.

2. Yellow Sea Chest

As per airline instructions
we have each packed two bags
to travel 30 hours to Dublin.

We have left behind my great grandmother’s
sea chest which contained all her possessions
when she travelled to Sydney 150 years ago.
She had luggage restrictions as well –
one sea chest for everything she wanted to keep
for a new life away from hunger and the English.

The sea chest has secret compartments
and pictures from the 1860s
varnished onto boards.
The leather straps have rotted away
and my grandfather painted it yellow
during the depression
a bright colour to cheer things up.

I have recently found that the curved top
meant that it had to be stacked on top
of the pile of cases in the hold
and indicated that my great grandmother
had a little more social standing than most.

.

3. Leaving Roscommon – Strokestown Park
(An Gorta Mór)

We drive out through the gates
the chill in our bones
a reminder of a history
that follows us down
these short country roads.

A land that tugs at memory.
My grandfather’s stories
of why the English can’t be trusted
grain exported while his grandparents starved
his mother hung by her hair from a roof beam.

These things are hard to forget
even across generations.

.

4. Dublin GPO

Along with the saints
my grandfather taught me
the name of the martyrs:

Patrick Pearse
Thomas MacDonagh
Thomas Clarke
Joseph Plunkett
William Pearse
Edward Daly
Michael O’Hanrahan
John MacBride
Éamonn Ceannt
Michael Mallin
Seán Heuston
Con Colbert
James Connolly
Sean MacDiarmada.

He had just turned sixteen when the uprising took place
on the other side of the world.
Fifty years later he still held that anger.

He told me that they had to rope Connolly
to a chair in front of the firing squad
because his ankle had been shattered
by a bullet in the GPO.

My grandfather never saw Ireland
but today I silently tell him
there is no union jack
flying on Dublin GPO.

This poem first appeared is a slightly different form in Rabbit 29: Lineages.

 ————————-

Mark Roberts is a writer, critic and publisher living on unceded Darug and Gundungurra land. He is co-editor, along with Linda Adair, of Rochford Street Review. His last poetry collection, Concrete Flamingos, was published by Island Press in 2016. His next collection, The Office of Literary Endeavours, will be published by 5 Islands Press in 2025.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents