Rough, Ready
As the mass graves in Tuam are forensically evacuated, the Catholic Church in Ireland still has much to answer for.
No t-shirt slogan, no event page on Facebook,
No hurled bricks or bottled diesel fuel,
No storm-tossed rhetoric, no imposing chant,
No pot, pan, proclamation, coalition, alarm bell,
Just rough times, ready times.
No bilious graffiti,
No rabid tooth or red claw, no LUAS timetable
From Cherrywood to Bally-Go-Fuck-Yourself,
No wartime photos in glorious sepia, no nightly vigil
Where even the demand for reform shrivels into cliché.
Just rough times, ready times.
Children are born with bread knives in their mouths
There are enough toys, digital distractions,
Pacifying apps. There are enough places to hide,
Enough people converted into fleshy driftwood.
O republic of water tax, bondholder, hand-out
And bailout, of inquiries as public as the glare:
Poison from your chalice tastes sweet as nectar
During rough times, ready times.
No garda commissioner retiring from the back seat,
No slashed tyre, no speechless megaphone,
No loyalties congealed by pre-election spin,
The futility of debate, dulcet slogans, promises
Brittle as china. Someday, the alphabet shall
Be completely rewritten, vowel and consonant
Replaced with thorn and bust glass
to narrate such rough times, such ready times.
No uncommon criminal, no headstone raised
Over a mass grave where the bones of children
Parboil under a seal of dreamless secrecy,
No frost clutching the urban ground, no flagpole.
Our war of independence isn’t to be adorned
By the syrupy sentiments of ballad or prayer.
We lack the humility to go fuck ourselves:
Only the rough times, the ready times. *The Tuam institution in Co. Galway was one of many “homes” where pregnant girls and unmarried women were incarcerated to give birth in secret throughout the 20th century. Women were often forcibly separated from their children. Some infants were rehomed, in Ireland, the United Kingdom or as far away as the United States, Canada and Australia (and many of these adoptions were in fact illegal), but hundreds more died and their remains were discarded – their mothers often never knowing what truly happened to their babies. In the case of Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home Which operated between 1925 to 1961 in Tuam, Co. Galway, thanks to the dilgence and bravery of local historian Catherine Corless, an unmarked mass grave of children's skeletons were discovered beneath a concrete slab believed to cover the home's septic tank. Many of these children were revealed to be infants and no burial records were made for them. At the time of writing, excavation works are underway on the site to exhume and properly identify the remains.