Famine Girls.(Poem)

 
Famine Girls 
 
   Cobh 1850 
 
   The roads to Cork fill 
   with the young, but not the very young. 
   Driven by whispers to get to the workhouse 
   they dare not look back at the tumble of cottages. 
   A slow shuffle, tugged forward by rumours of soup. 
 
   Holding onto the rails as feebly as old women, they haul 
   themselves onto the deck and stare at the harbour side shadowed 
   with thin quiet strangers. The man who brought them was already 
   turning away; back to the girls who wouldn't risk leaving 
   their pallets of bundled straw or who couldn't give up 
   hoping someone had survived, back to the new 
   girls coming in from the hedges, distended 
   bellies, mouths tinged green. 
 
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