when
our family
came first to these shores,
cast out by sheep but shipped worse,
we were sent to drive their distant & unthinking
kin
in alien lands
behind
there was nothing save the land
roof-tree felled, houses all down-torn & burnt...
so leaving nothing
to return to
new lands their children
could belong to but, for the exiles themselves,
betrayed & driven like vermin from their own place,
whilst
"decided preference would be given to strangers"
there could be no new homecoming
for these
were a people who inhabited their past,
its bones breaking through thin soil that offered such
meagre existence
and they were broken when forced to leave
some died,
upon the shore...or walked alone
into the hills, but the young in their strength
were driven amidships, to crouch upon rotting timbers
until the other end of the world.
so now let sheep
protect the fathers and money burnt for pleasures long
gone
warm
their hearts,
as none now mourn the the chiefs
of clans mere names:
for the children
of eviction return no more.
John Henry Calvinist
