A Habitable Grief

From "Colony"

Long ago

I was a child in a strange country:

I was Irish in England.

I learned

a second language there

which has stood me in good stead:

the lingua franca of a lost land.

A dialect in which

what had never been could still be found:

The infinite horizon. Always far

and impossible. That contrary passion

to be whole.

This is what language is:

a habitable grief. A turn of speech

for the everyday and ordinary abrasion

of losses such as this:

which hurts

just enough to be a scar.

And heals just enough to be a nation.

---(c) Eavan Boland. All rights reserved.