Time is shadowless

Here's an Eavan Boland favourite, taken from within another 1990 volume (as pictured), which I've owned since its original publication ...

... all leading me to quickly conclude that 1990 must have been a very good year ;-)


Mountain Time

Time is shadowless there: mornings re-occur
only as enchantments, only as time for her

to watch berries ripen by on the mountain ash;
for him, at a short distance from her, to catch fish.

Afterwards, darkness will be only what is left of
a mouth after kissing or a hand laced in a hand;

a branch; a river; will be what is lost of words
as they turn to silences and then to sleep. Yet

when they leave the mountain what he will remember is
the rowan tree: that blemish, that scarlet. She will think of

the arc of the salmon after sudden capture —
its glitter a larceny of daylight on slate.

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Eavan Boland (1944 - 2020)

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