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A Habitable Grief
作者Author  /  Eavan  Boland  伊凡•鮑倫

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.

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