Description The Blight
Grab hold of the potato
As the soil is giving birth:
A firmness that will ground you
In the pure and peaty earth.
Splice it with your spade-blade
And glimpse the creamy white,
Then pray it won?t turn grey
With the creeping of the Blight.
The stench hangs over Clifden
And Connemara quails:
The crop was growing lushly
But it withers and it fails.
You can grope for consolations
But all of them are trite,
For hope fled to the heavens
With the sweet smell of the Blight.
Phytopthora infestans,
Its scientific name:
In Latin or in Gaelic
The hunger is the same.
The spores drop from the leaves
And they wash down out of sight
To penetrate each tuber
With the blackness of the Blight.
Grab hold of the potato;
It detaches from the root:
An earthy pagan blessing,
The child of stem and shoot.
Boil it fast, and eat it,
Lest out of wrath, or spite,
The gods should turn it rotten
And the flesh collapse in Blight.
Your landlord, he is absent,
He lives somewhere in Surrey:
So long as you are paying rent
He has no cause to worry,
For profit doesn?t give a damn
For any pauper?s plight,
And con-men find a way to gain,
Yes, even from the Blight.
Grab hold of the potato;
Pulp squelches in your hand:
Invoke the gods of Erin,
Your connection with the land.
Cu Chulainn is weeping;
The Morrighan takes flight,
For crows alone shall thrive
On the ravage of the Blight.
Lyric by Giles Watson, to the tune of ?Young Ned of the Hill?.
