'It's where language starts'

 

“Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.” – Eavan Boland 

 

Born in Dublin, Ireland in September of 1944, Boland was a multiple award-winning poet who had the rare distinction of being inducted into both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Royal Irish Academy.  Her best-known collections are The Lost Land; A Woman Without A Country; and The Historians, released just at the time of her death in April of 2020 (later that year it won the prestigious Costa Book Award).   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Boland’s,

                                                 

                                              This Moment

                                              A neighbourhood.

                                              At dusk.

 

                                              Things are getting ready

                                              to happen

                                              out of sight.

 

                                              Stars and moths.

                                              And rinds slanting around fruit.

 

                                              But not yet.

 

                                              One tree is black.

                                              One window is yellow as butter.

 

                                              A woman leans down to catch a child

                                              who has run into her arms

                                              this moment. 

 

                                              Stars rise.

                                              Moths flutter.

                                              Apples sweeten in the dark.