A potato explodes in the oven.  Poetry and famine:

the poets who never starved, whose names we know

the famished nameless taking ship with their hoard of poetry

Annie Sullivan half-blind in the workhouse enthralling her child-

                                                                        mates

with lore her father had borne in his head from Limerick along with

                                                                        the dream of work

and hatred of England smouldering like a turf-fire.  But a poetry

                                                                        older than hatred.

                                                                        Poetry

in the workhouse, laying of the rails, a potato splattering

                                                                        oven walls

poetry of cursing and silence, bitter and deep, shallow and drunken

poetry of priest-talk, of I.R.A.-talk, kitchen-talk, dream-talk,

                                                                        tongues despised

in cities where in a mere fifty years language has rotted to

                                                                        jargon, lingua franca

                                                                        of inclusion

from turns of speech ancient as the potato, muttered at the coals

                                                                        by women and men

rack-rented, harshened, numbed by labor ending

in root-harvest rotted in field.  1847.  No relief.  No succour.

America.  Meat three times a day, they said.  Slaves—You would

                                                                        not be that.