by Eavan Boland
in the slow work of the moth fed on
white mulberry leaves. Had made her say:
from now on let daylight be black-
and-white and menial in-betweens and
let the distances be made of silk. My
distances were made of grit and the light
rain throws away in the hour between planets.
And rush-hour traffic. My keys were ready.
What she knew was gone and what I
wanted to know she had never known:
the moment her sorrow entered marble—
the exact angle of the cut at which
the sculptor made the medium remember
its own ordeal in the earth, the aeons
crushing and instructing it until it wept itself
into inches, atoms of change. Above all,
whether she flinched as the chisel found
that region her tears inferred,
where grief and its emblems are inseparable.
A WOMAN PAINTED ON A LEAF
I found it among curios and silver.
in the pureness of wintry light.
A woman painted on a leaf.
Fine lines drawn on a veined surface
in a handmade frame.
This is not my face. Neither did I draw it.
A leaf falls in a garden.
The moon cools its aftermath of sap.
The pith of summer dries out in starlight.
A woman is inscribed there.
This is not death. It is the terrible
suspension of life.
I want a poem
I can grow old in. I want a poem I can die in.
I want to take
this dried-out face,
as you take a starling from behind iron,
and return it to its element of air, of ending—
so that autumn
which was once
the hard look of stars,
the frown on a gardener’s face,
a gradual bronzing of the distance,
will be,
from now on,
a crisp tinder underfoot. Cheekbones. Eyes. Will be
a mouth crying out. Let me.
Let me die.
Copyright © 1994 by Eavan Boland
All rights reserved
First published as a Norton paperback 1995
The text of this book is composed in Centauer.
Composition by PennSet, Inc.
BOOK DESIGN BY CHRIS WELCH.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boland, Eavan.
In a time of violence / by Eavan Boland.
p. cm.
Poetry.
I. Tide.
PR6052.035149 1994
821’.914—dc20 93-32371
eISBN 978-0-393-34645-9
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
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