No spot of earth where men have so fiercely for ages of time <br />Fought and survived and cancelled each other, <br />Pict and Gael and Dane, McQuillan, Clandonnel, O'Neill, <br />Savages, the Scot, the Norman, the English, <br />Here in the narrow passage and the pitiless north, perpetual <br />Betrayals, relentless resultless fighting. <br />A random fury of dirks in the dark: a struggle for survival <br />Of hungry blind cells of life in the womb. <br />But now the womb has grown old, her strength has gone forth; <br />a few red carts in a fog creak flax to the dubs, <br />And sheep in the high heather cry hungrily that life is hard; a <br />plaintive peace; shepherds and peasants. <br /> <br />We have felt the blades meet in the flesh in a hundred ambushes <br />And the groaning blood bubble in the throat; <br />In a hundred battles the heavy axes bite the deep bone, <br />The mountain suddenly stagger and be darkened. <br />Generation on generation we have seen the blood of boys <br />And heard the moaning of women massacred, <br />The passionate flesh and nerves have flamed like pitch-pine and <br />fallen <br />And lain in the earth softly dissolving. <br />I have lain and been humbled in all these graves, and mixed new <br />flesh with the old and filled the hollow of my mouth <br />With maggots and rotten dust and ages of repose. I lie here and <br />plot the agony of resurrection.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/antrim/
