monday poem #94: Eavan Boland, "Called"
The first monday poem I posted was one of Boland's; I haven't revisited her work since then. Reading Against Love Poetry made me wonder why. I liked this book a lot; choosing one poem was difficult. I picked this one just because I like the last three lines so much.
Called
I went to find the grave of my grandmother
who died before my time. And hers.
I serached among marsh grass and granite
and single headstones
and smashed lettering
and archangel wings and found none.
For once, I said,
I will face this landscape
and look at it as she was looked upon:
Unloved because unknown.
Unknown because unnamed:
Glass Pistol Castle disappeared.
Baltray and then Clogher Head.
To the west the estuary of the Boyne-
stripped of its battles and history-
became only willow trees and distances.
I drove back in the half-light
of late summer on
anonymous roads on my journey home
as the constellations rose overhead,
some of them twisted into women:
pinioned and winged
and single-handedly holding high the dome
and curve and horizon of today and tomorrow.
All the ships looking up to them.
All the compasses made true by them.
All the night skies named for their sorrow.
- Eavan Boland
from Against Love Poetry
Called
I went to find the grave of my grandmother
who died before my time. And hers.
I serached among marsh grass and granite
and single headstones
and smashed lettering
and archangel wings and found none.
For once, I said,
I will face this landscape
and look at it as she was looked upon:
Unloved because unknown.
Unknown because unnamed:
Glass Pistol Castle disappeared.
Baltray and then Clogher Head.
To the west the estuary of the Boyne-
stripped of its battles and history-
became only willow trees and distances.
I drove back in the half-light
of late summer on
anonymous roads on my journey home
as the constellations rose overhead,
some of them twisted into women:
pinioned and winged
and single-handedly holding high the dome
and curve and horizon of today and tomorrow.
All the ships looking up to them.
All the compasses made true by them.
All the night skies named for their sorrow.
- Eavan Boland
from Against Love Poetry