Paupers Row

Old Man of Pauper’s Row

In a doss house in London an old man grasped my hand.
Father, will you hear my sins, before, I leave this land.
I bent to kneel before his chair as tattered as himself.
With bent head and shoulders bowed he began to confess.

I am a cruel and selfish man; have been so all my life.
My mother tried to change me. May God rest her soul tonight!
I never did a kindness, believing it to be weak.
When it suited my purpose I abused as I pleased.
I took what I wanted when I had the chance.
Plundered, ravaged when I felt the need.”

“I see that you are Irish?” I said to break his grief.
A sad and weary look filled his troubled face.
I fought in many countries beside many brave young men.
I’m glad to say I never fought on Irish soil
or harmed a fellowman.
He fell silent for a moment and mopped his beaded brow
Then drawing a ragged breath he told me his story
of the army and the west.
I’m a son of dear old Galway. T’was there I signed my name
That changed me from a country boy to a soldier brave.

I loved the Army and the life it opened up to me. But in the end
It brought me down.
And I shamed my family.
I moved up and down the country, wherever I was sent.
Donegal, Cork, Dublin, Kerry and the rest
I drank and spent my money;
Made the pubs of Ireland rich
But, come the Thursday after pay day
I’d be as poor as a church mouse.

Then came the day I had to leave
The Sergeant shook my hand.
Saying, don’t you worry, Paddy?
Sure, man, you’ll be grand.

The outside world had changed since I’d joined in 65
My family, long neglected, simply passed me by.

Burying his lined and worn face in the crook of my arm
He cried, Father, tell me, my life meant something
More than woman drink and crime.

I left him where I found him, in that battered old armchair
A broken man, with no family, no friends.

And I thought I heard him whisper,
If only I had cared.
In a doss house in London a man hung by a rope.
Preparing him for burial, in the pocket of his coat
The undertakers found a crumpled note.
The fires of hell beckon, the old man he had wrote.
I leave behind no kith or kin. In this world I am all alone.
No one will mourn my passing on.
Or, even care I’m gone
The priest choked back a sob, as he placed the final sod
On a lonely grave in London named locally as pauper’s row.

Author: GC Hill 2014 copyright