They lean. They sink down crumbling round-shouldered. The very air is eating them. Blithe colonies of lichen nibble the fretted inscriptions, but Mathias Hanrahan, whose last words were an enquiry as to whether or if the goose would be cooked, Christmas Day, 1861, and Sarah Kilcoyne, mother of fourteen, stumbling in famishment for a canister of flour off the neighbours, dwell among us still, dwell – are verifiable – beloved morsels in the mouth of race memory. Patrick’s latest collection, The...
