Entre el Túria i el Ridaura

A Habitable Grief

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 sted:

 

the lingua franca of a lost land

 

A dialect in which

what had never been could still we 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 abrassion

of losses such as this

 

which hurts

just enough to be a scar.

 

And heals just enough to be a nation.

 

EAVAN BOLAND