Feel Them Roar
They’ll huddle on crowdless platforms, alone.
Or on decks that are windswept, without cry or moan
It’s daunting, on boat rides, with noone that cares.
As rain falls and winds blow,
They’re tired, they’re scared.
With illness, with secrets, nobody to tell,
A foreign land waits,
There’ll be whispers, not yells.
They’re travelers, not tourists, mere patients, on boats,
With no arms to hold them, they’ll shiver in coats.
Generations of beaten, disadvantaged and poor,
Seen as fallen, they’re broken, forgotten, they’re ‘hoors’,
But they’re daughters, they’re sisters, they’re schoolfriends, and more,
And they’re closed off from mankind, as churches shut doors.
800 in Galway, so long they were lost,
Their parents, who were they? And suffered what cost?
For Savita in Connacht, Longford’s young Ann,
Joanna in Kerry, and an unpunished man.
They’d so much to live for, but so little choice,
Remember them, think of them, so they may have voice.