In Tara's halls, harps echo;
around doth ruin lie.
Though far from home,
we shall come there by and by.

We wait as anxious children,
for their mother, now no more.
And we, with arms outstretched in passion,
reach toward that blessed shore.

Our wait is never done;
everlasting beyond Death.
Alone, in haunted twilight,
you may hear our bated breath.

Our cries for Mother Tara,
unheard in lands away,
echo in the rooms within Her,
beyond your Judgement Day.

copyright 1996
Suzanne Neeley

Galway Rain
(by Declan Green)

Listen to this window pane's
Tale of sorrow, tears and shame
Borne by those who long ago
Struggled westward meek and low

Time was not their friend
Life's foe lie in furrow deep below
A velvet shroud had soiled the sew
And winter's wind was yet to blow

Up from wexford , meath and clare
They stowed away without a fare
The west lay open, wild and free
A hope of Irish dignity

Penniless the Crown proclaimed
"To hell or Connaught's" sad refrain
Through thistle laden fields of gray
The Burren's endless unmarked graves

Can't you feel their souless pain
Huddled in this galway rain
Cold and hungry, soiled and stained
Blinded by a galway rain

There are storms that heave and blow
There are fields of dreams cut low
And Left to sallow, unreclaimed
Beaten down by galway rain

Here --- stood the final ground
Granite stone and bogs are bounded
by their walls and lanes
Forever washed in galway rain


Copyright 1998 declang@aol.com

Declan's poem takes you back, reliving hard times in an Ireland we have almost forgot. But every now and again we can feel the scar.

Declan has another poem Omagh, written just after the bomb on
15th. August 1998