After Ireland’s 1916 Rising, in England

Lavinia Kumar

The grey stone prison was all was known
of Dartmoor’s wild barren bogs,
the mists where DeValera spent time
deciphering political fog.

He’d come in over Hairy Hands Bridge—
hoped for help from faeries,
but saw a man sink down with his horse,
and decided to be leery.

Indeed, faeries did come over with him
to that dank moor in south Devon,
where it was so hard to understand
just one word out of seven.

Faeries won’t leave Irish men alone,
even gone to foreign lands.
They guide, decode, trick and support—
deal out a suitable hand.

Those faeries let the prisoner know
his fortune would keep on,
that escape would not be needed now,
to sit back, stop the moaning—

a sound he’d hear come from coffins
carried on the moor at night.
The black horses spawned at a dark pool
where hounds howled at a light.