Poetry X Hunger
  • Home
  • Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Hunger Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition >
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
    • Recent highlights
  • Contact/Submit/Take Action
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call to Action
    • Resources & Donations >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources

Hunger is a worldwide scourge. 
​This section includes poems recently written by poets from around the world.   

Poem by Rena Fleming

9/14/2020

0 Comments

 
Great Changes

“Deaths and marriages make great changes.”
That’s what they used to say,
In a general way,
Not specific to the Famine.
There were too many deaths then.
They were too close.
Dying was a failure.
That wasn’t spoken of.
It was lived out of.
It cut a deeper line
Of before and after
Than Independence, the change
From rulers to leaders.
It removed or erased so many
It changed Ireland.
It changed land ownership
From up and down to the middle.
The strong farmers rose.
Their cattle conquered crops.
Marriages were made to unite fields.
In a domestic commerce
Resources were invested for
The future in a son and
A son a priest for good measure
Was a measure of success.
Women served purposes.
Their speaking was sanctioned
In self-betraying confessions
To oppressive clergy.
Their lives went to the farms
Their love to the productive sons.
Their marriages were fodder
For literature.
The absolution of lost knowledge
Comes slowly on the land.
Roots grow from our feet.
My grand father struck a man
Who, in drink, accused my forebears

Of the theft of fields from his forebears,
After the Hunger.
In the Cromwellian phrase of West Limerick-
My grandfather “falled” him.
Who will know now in that place
The story or the truth?
These many years later
We appear to be recovering
From that disease of the blood-
The fear of want.
The roots growing from our feet
Are shorter.
We can love and leave the land.
There are changes.
Click on the file below to listen to Rena read her poem:
great_changes_3.m4a
File Size: 4885 kb
File Type: m4a
Download File

Picture
Rena Fleming grew up on a farm in Co.Limerick and now enjoys the landscape and the shores of Galway Bay.

0 Comments

    Authors

    You can find poets' names under Categories

    Archives

    February 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019

    Poets

    All
    Abha Das Sarma
    Betty Makula
    Brenda Gunn
    Brian Tawanda Aka Towandah Ryan
    Chandra Gurung
    Denish Moorthy
    Doreena Jennings
    Edward Kabali
    Fin Hall
    Fizza Abbas
    Ger Duffy
    Guy Chambers
    Imtiaj Alom
    International Poetry
    Jose Padua
    Josephine LoRe
    Katiba Muhammed
    Kelly Van Nelson
    Laura Mulcahy
    Martin Chivaku
    Patience Gumbo
    Poems By JSI Team Members
    Rashid Hussain
    Rena Fleming
    Richard Stephenson
    Sharmila Pokharel
    Takudzwa Chikepe
    Tony Treanor
    Zolisa Gumede

    RSS Feed

Copyright PoetryXHunger 2022


Search the website:

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Hunger Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition >
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
    • Recent highlights
  • Contact/Submit/Take Action
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call to Action
    • Resources & Donations >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources