Keith Moynihan O' Brien (Cork, Ireland)

There is a place not far from Yeats' Tower.
No life grows there, no lively tune, nor poets power
Has ever rang of this land. Yet here I may recall,
In remembrance, Roscommon; land of the funeral pall.

Headstones have they planted in every field,
Springing forth from grey faced loins, and thus a graveyard yield.
The dead outnumber the living, the youth long gone from the yard.
Inevitably interred in the adjoining garden, they stamped down hard.

There was a wedding there amongst the old dying firs.
The bride wore white, with flowers from a broken wreath.
A funeral plot the wedding gift- a family grave.
Life was buried there; man, woman and unborn child.
What they had, they gave,
And into the ground they piled.