A poem by Rob McDonnell - Templecurraheen Graveyard

You'd miss it if you didn't know
Just a stile in the stone (wall)
A painted white gate, weathered but
looking well for its age.
The slope rises hard –
Its edges bitten by nettle & briar.
The steep road, bending like an old man's back

But climb it, & the world unfurls.
Carrigtwohill, Cobh, the winding of the harbour –
East Cork cast out below,
Stitched & spread like God's own tapestry.
A gift half-offered then taken back

In the hush of the graveyard, stones look Least
Some broken, some worn by time,
'Some nameless – others perfect.
Tilting towards the dawn's first breath
Even the blank slabs
Lichen-laced, lean to the rising sun.

Beyond the trees, further away,
The famine pit lies quiet
No crosses, no epitaphs –
Just a shallow dip where the ground remembers
Hundreds thrown to clay like seed - in sorrow
A hunger so wide, it swallowed names.
Now only the wind calls to them

The air here holds its own litany
The whistle through the yew & Sycamore
Rain that falls sideways,
Soaking into bone & root like memory
When Sunlight comes
It breaks sudden & soft
Grace on limestone shoulders & crooked marble

Some lie grand in their beds of stone –
You can tell by the flourish, the pride of cut
Others left only the suggestion of a name
The barest curve where chisel once bit

There are rebels here,
Blacksmiths, infants
A farmer in his Sunday coat,
His boots polished one last time
They all lie as equals now.
Whatever pride or troubles they carried,
Has long been stripped by wind, by moss by time.

What stays with me
The hill they would have climbed
The funeral cart groaning slow
Wheels gritting the dirt & gravel
Mourners hunched forward
As if the hill itself would undo them again

Just the tread of feet, the hush of grief
The awful weight of words unspoken
No coin or curse matters here
The clay takes Lord & ploughboys the same
Their dreams are but dust now
But whispers in the soil

All that lasts
Their east-facing stone
Kissed each morning
By the dawn's first light