By Lough Scur Poem by Paul HADFIELD

</></></>The dead and buried share a plot
Divided by a turfy path
From Sidh Beag to the water's edge
The narrow road from life to death.

Perhaps they were in that green place
Left stranded by a primal tide
And from the dug of that low hill
Were weaned against their mother's side?

And how, between this sea, this sky
Can men live while their dead are still
Unsure of rising winter hail
As stones are lying on the hill?

And how between this sky and sea
Can men die careless of the bones
Of ancestors across the way
Whose hollow thoughts are cairned in stones?

Perhaps they felt the green turn grey
And saw their cattle grow unfed
And masons toil above the sod
They fed from to swell out their dead?

And cased in a demesne of ghosts
What man alive would stay to stare
The North wind's spume across the lough
And see no spectres in the air?

Perhaps to exorcise the charm
Of blackthorn came a holy man
Who, casting newer spells in yew
Has left this ground as it began?