Monday Poetry September 11, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Poetry, Uncategorized.trackback
I suspect the expectation for me today woud be more of this blog’s usual line of politics. But I think I have made my position on this country’s piss-poor reaction to 9/11 perfectly clear in the past. Instead of going off on that again, I present a deeply political poem, though perhaps not in the way that many of the poems that appear here are political.
Eavan Boland
“Quarantine”
On the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.
She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.
Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:
Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.
Best [love] poem I’ve ever read.
(the brackets are because “love poem” isn’t the right genre)
This is definitely one of my favorites by Boland. Excellent choice, my friend.
That is an incredibly moving poem. Thank you for posting it!
EB: This is maybe my favorite of Boland’s work. I haven’t seen it for a long time. Good post.