Driving from Durrus to Ballydehob

to see for myself the family farmhouse

they burned my grandmother out of

a hundred years ago the hedgerow

on my right gives way to intermittent

flashes of the lovely spangle of the bay

we leave behind to turn inland and east

for the townland Lisheennacreagh,

which means a little ringfort in a field.

*They gave them two days to leave, then torched

the barn for emphasis, and somehow scores

of pigs and sheep and horses, and Martha,

and eleven siblings, got herded on

the Cork train, then more trains north

to south Armagh, and it might have been

the next left there was the badger dead

in the middle of the road and I

should stop and push it to one side.

*The body flows towards a complete halt

at the tip of the stamp pad of its still

damp nose

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