Famine Roads

Galway, Ireland: September 2001

Across Galway Bay,
crumbling limestone roads
still cling halfway up the steep Burren,
Irish for ‘a stony place.’
Relief work for Famine victims—
building roads to nowhere.
From sea level in Kinvarna,
hauling slabs of karstic limestone
from the shattered acres
of Rockforest,
a few yards every day for years
up the side of Mullaghmore Mountain
toward Black Head.