Bob Carley manages to pin down how we’re all feeling this evening in the wake of the news from Tuam.
Much as we’ve tried to distract ourselves on Friday, our thoughts keep turning back to Tuam and the discovery of “significant quantities” of human remains at a site in Galway.
It’s an incredibly sad day in Ireland, and that sadness is reflected in the words of Bob Carley.
Bob – whom we’ve written about under happier circumstances before – posted the following words to our Facebook page on Friday evening.
Here they are in full…
I’ve been quite disturbed and deeply saddened by the news today of the find of the mass grave in the convent in Tuam.
To think that nearing a thousand tiny infants were laid in shame with no acknowledgment of their tiny lives. No mark to say their little feet and tiny hands and dimpled faces had been among us.
Time can never erase injustice.
My heart is with the poor mothers who went to that space of Bons Secours, or ‘good help’, thinking that it was a safe space for them and for that amazing life that was forming within them.
It’s as if the little mites didn’t matter. They were ‘insignificant!’
Ironically, today, the report stated that ‘significant’ remains had been found. I know this was speaking to the quantity of remains but I allowed my heart to imagine a tiny baby who had been watching since, maybe, 1930 to hear someone use the word significant beside their name.
So I guess from a space of sadness I wrote these lines perhaps as a kiss of love into the eternal resting space of these beautiful significant babies and their beautiful mothers.
SIGNIFICANT
Today I am significant
That day I was not
Taken from warm mother’s arms
Laid in a cold hard cot I lay cold afraid sad ignored
The cold convent air
Wrapped its blanket of judgment around me
And soft eyes looked away
That day I was not deemed significant, I am significant today
In dead of night when
Chubby cheeks kiss pillows soft
When lovers entwine in caring knots
When darkness covered convent walls
They took my cold lost body
From its cold host cot
And laid it in that
Cold lost plot
No plaque to mark the place where insignificance lay
Not significant then
But called significant today
And there I lay having hurt no one
Having no crime but that I came From love that oughtn’t speak its name
And hatred hurtfulness and shame
And spite were poured out in
His name
And Bon Secours or comfort’s grace
Was never written on their face
As they laid the sod above that space
And prayed that insignificant me
Would always insignificant be
But as my white bones laid in rest
And decades covered deep distress
My soul adjusted to the gloom
And saw in this subterranean room
Which suffers neither night nor day
A thousand Insignificants lay
And then a caring heart spoke out
Compassion love and care broke out
They came to see could it be true
Done on behalf of You
It’s love for justice screamed to say
You’ll be significant some day
And in another room of hush
Eyes avert the gaze of us
A thousand sets of eyes look down
On chain wearing members of our town
And folk with folders pens and files
Given furtive glances frozen smiles
And hearts that never beat now pound
“Significant remains have been found”
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