Michael Harty

The years are flattened here, all the stories
end at once. A soldier who fell in 1863
lies beside the sister who rolled hoops with him
past this barred gate, dropped flowers then clods
on his coffin, mourned him until her spinster death.

Here is the brother who fought for the other side
and survived on thirty years of bitterness. Here the obelisk
of a proud clan claims “Four Generations of Leaders”.
It points a sundial shadow to a young mother’s grave
beside a little circle of slabs, a stone playpen.

Mysteries live on in the restless space outside
the wrought-iron boundary, but within,
all is settled. The shrill questioning voice belongs
to the redbird; the scarlet drops in the grass
are strawberries growing wild.