The mighty Saint Lawrence River cradles in its hand
a tiny piece of history, upon the shores of which there stands
a giant Celtic Cross, memorial to those who came
to the island of Grosse Île, that once most dreaded name.

The island keeps its memories in a meadow lush and green
where weathered wooden crosses dot the now peaceful scene,
the final resting place for thousands struck down by a disease 
that showed no hint of mercy, after seven weeks at sea.

Over a hundred thousand Irish, in eighteen forty-seven
packed overcrowded ships to flee their land’s Great Famine.
They sailed across the ocean, holding their futures in their dreams
but many a fever-ridden emigrant would die in quarantine.

First to arrive, The Syria, two-hundred thirty-one on board,
eighty-four with typhus fever for the make-shift nursing ward.
 Only fifty beds to hold them, more sick than anyone had dreamed,
the first to die upon that island was little Ellen Keane.

More ships came behind them, three hundred ninety-eight in all
over five-thousand dead were buried there before that fall,
still others died upon the ships,  never making it to shore,
those buried out at sea numbered five-thousand more.

Steeped in a tragic history of orphans on the sea,
a mere three miles long and one mile wide, it rests in peaceful sleep
keeping its somber memories of all the souls once lost,
beneath the grass of Grosse Île, guarded by the Celtic Cross





                 april 2003