Irish Famine/Holocaust (Historical) Poem by Spock the Vegan
Irish Famine/Holocaust (Historical)
In conquered Ireland one million starved to death.
Another one to two million emigrated (left)
Between 1845 and 1852 during the potato famine.
The causes were the potato blight and mammon.
All over Europe crops were ravaged by the blight,
But except in Ireland the effects of it were slight.
One third of the Irish were dependent on the potato,
And rent to the 'absentee landlords' they did owe.
The Irish farmers were called 'impoverished tenants'
With minimal wages as their lifelong sentence.
Historian Arthur Young wrote the Irish tenants were slaves.
Poor men could be horsewhipped by the landlord knaves.
The British Government established a Royal Commission.
Maintaining English wealth seemed to be their mission.
There existed after 1847 an absolute food sufficiency,
But of humanitarian efforts there was stark deficiency.
'Free trade' exported all the corn, wheat, oats, and barley,
Irish farmers grew to pay their rents. There was hardly
anything left for the farmer and his family to eat. Free trade
tolerated no change in this starving situation to be made.
The British Government refused to undertake assisted emigration.
The Irish viceroy proposed to rid 400,000 paupers from his nation.
The potato blight came about from lack of genetic diversity,
But the holocaust came from landlord and government perversity.
Free trade gave the Irish farmers three choices when the potato
crops failed: starve on their farms, while selling their grain crops and paying their rent; report to the Public Works or the Poor Law workhouses to be worked/starved to death as the Nazis did
to the inmates of Auschwitz; or emigrate and take a 50 percent
chance of surviving the passage across the Atlantic
The title of this poem intrigued me becuase I too have written a poem about the Irish Famine, entitled Ireland. This is a fine account of the event, one instance, among so many, of colonial exploitation.
There seems to be no limit to human greed, as we are finding out in the elections.
Another educational gem. I've learned more history by reading your poems than I did in high school!
Thanks. That doesn't say much for High School teachers, or maybe your memory! Anyway, we need to learn our whole life. I like writing educational poems.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/10/2024 6:59:41 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Profoundly educative poem..It covered all the essential aspects and moments of the Irish Famine. While reading it, episodes of the " coffin ships" , " the Famine roads" along with the testimonies of the witnesses that are left in art and literature (for instance Sketches in the West of Ireland by J. Mahoney) will always remind everyone of the ordeal popped into my head.
Thanks, Agatha. I'm glad you found some interest.