Dug out of the homeplace
In the small hours,
With the clothes on our backs.
A sorrowful convoy -
Highlanders at either end,
Young boys raised on crofts,
Sensitive to other clearances,
Helped us away to Lisnaskea -
The childer shaking
In the back of an army jeep,
Like beat dogs.
I wouldn't give up my few acres:
I'd sooner rats colonised
My hearth, ate my feed,
Than see it go the other way.
I'd as leave the lintel fell apart,
Than welcome interlopers
The parlour choked with briars
Than gone over to Rome
My sweat cut that peat.
My tears fed crabbit soil.
My blood abides there still.
Unspilled, it's true,
But soiled these many years
By my running.
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