Ireland's OWN Poetry & Prose

For PIRA
—by Míchealín Daugherty

Tomorrow I will rise up and bury the past
like the gold-toothed man
with his shovel on the beach.
With his hollow eyes
Shirking like an apparition
I can almost taste the stinging sea salt of his memories
Haunted, he digs in the light of dawn
calling to distant ghosts of the freedom-row
Would he have me believe this is really
the truth?
This is the future?
O wonderment and awe — does he believe
such gulls caw-cawing to their
power-gods?

Tomorrow I will rise up and bury the past
like the gold-toothed man
with his shovel on the beach.