the poem about which I should have written my math paper

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Lace

Bent over
the open notebook--

light fades out
making trees stand out
and my room
at the back
of the house, dark.

In the dusk
I am still
looking for it--
the language that is

lace:

a baroque obligation
at the wrist
of a prince
in a petty court.
Look, just look
at the way he shake out

the thriftless phrases,
the crystal rhetoric
of bobbined knots
and bosses:
a vagrant drift
of emphasis
to wave away an argument
or frame the hand
he kisses;
which, for all that, is still

what someone
in the corner
of a room,
in the dusk,
bent over
as the light was fading

lost their sight for.

Eavan Boland

2 comments:

Katherine said...

I love Eavan Boland. So much.

alea said...

I was writing about lace, so I stumbled across this one. It's my first exposure to her, but I definitely want to seek out more now.

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