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Not: It is a common belief in Ireland that anyone
who steps on a famine
grave will have the strength
sucked from their body
by the hungry bones underneath
Crossing the shallow holdings high above sea
Where few birds nest, the luckless foot may
pass
From the bright safety of experience
Into the terror of the hungry grass.
Here in a year when poison from the air
First withered in despair the growth of spring
Some skull-faced wretch whom nettle could not
save
Crept on four bones to his last scattering,
Crept, and the shrivelled heart which drove
his thought
Towards platters brought in hospitality
Burst as the wizened eyes measured the miles
Like dizzy walls forbidding him the city.
Little the earth reclaimed from that poor body
And yet remembering him the place has grown
Bewitched and the thin grass he nourishes
Racks with his famine, sucks marrow from the
bone.
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