Prize-winning Poem

For our opening post, we have chosen the poem by our Head of English, Grainne Tobin. We were delighted when Grainne won the Mourne Observer Poetry Prize in January 2007.


Migrant

Tell me a really story. Tell me what it was like
when you were small, which way you walked to school,
the garden where you tried to dig to the other side of the world,
your uncle's rows of leafy plants to eat,
the orchard tree you climbed to hide,
the old lady waving from the window, the bags of coloured sweets
and the house you were told you'd inherit.

Apricots and lemons.
If you go there, pick some for me.

Tirhogar, spelga, Qatamon.
The names are spells.

Whe you shovelled soil aside with your scaled-down spade,
did you know you'd come out where you are now?
That your children would save cereal boxes
to reconstruct your home in sticky-tape and cardboard?

Tell me what happened. Exactly.