The Colony

Especially you, Masson. An extra wallop to the back of my head. You must never forget the famine, Masson. You must always remember how our great country suffered under the hands of the French, the French who turned us into a version of France, pretty little villages, vineyards, clock towers, when we were nomads, shepherds, our own country with prou

She smiled and stroked the woollen knot, a thickening of the wool to keep James warm, as it warmed me, knitted by my mother, though not my grandmother who still calls this English knitting, the English scheme, their guilt for the famine, for the land theft. They take our land, she says, starve us and then to alleviate the poverty, to assuage their

Women of Ireland. After Rembrandt. The three of them looking out at me like the men of the Drapers’ Guild, red on their skirts, black on their chests, dark shawls over their heads, though my mother’s hair is bare.