Day 27: Review

Today's prompt was to write a review poem, and since hearing of the sudden passing of Irish poet, Eavan Boland today, it had to be something in memory of her. 


Poet of our Times

for Eavan Boland, RIP 27/4/20

Hers were the words of the wise,
I knew it then, but more so now.
Outside history, we may have stood,
but she brought us in. The stars
shone bright in response.
Poet of our times, we journey with her
through leafy suburbia and all our
atavistic concerns, walk the famine roads
of history, poverty, oppression, power,
guided by her unfaltering light of truth,
her one woman intellectual odyssey
through a complexity of nation and culture. 
She brought the war horse of guilt
to our doors and left him there
to taunt, to tease, to bring our shame
to the fore and then held us
in her erudite embrace, her unflinching stare. 
We saw the love of a mother for a daughter,
the myths of love and the realities.
Came to know the fundamental facts 
of conventional gender roles,
black lace fans and shadow dolls,
the lessons of history unravelled, retold.
Learned the beauty of a suburban evening
and all of the other ordinary things,
their potential to be poetry -
even the blissful hum of the domestic interior.
Learned to know ourselves as survivors, 
suffragettes of a new world, creators
of a new language. Followed the map 
of her words to lead us here, 
to ourselves, finally: to know
what we may not have known, 
to be what we may not have been.