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From: "Jean R." <>
Subject: Ms. Eavan BOLAND - "Fond Memory" (contemp.) Dublin>England>USA
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 09:30:08 -0700

FOND MEMORY

It was a school where all the children wore darned worsted,
where they cried -- or almost all -- when the Reverend Mother
announced at lunchtime that the King had died

peacefully in his sleep. I dressed in wool as well,
ate rationed food, played English games and learned
how wise the Magna Carta was, how hard the Hanoverians

had tried, the measure and complexity of verse,
the hum and score of the whole orchestra.
At three o'clock I caught two buses home

where sometimes in the late afternoon
at a piano pushed into a corner of the playroom
my father would sit down and play the slow

lilts of Tom Moore while I stood there trying
not to weep at the cigarette smoke stinging up
from between his fingers and -- as much as I could think --

I thought this is my country, was, will be again,
this upward-straining song made to be
our safe inventory of pain. And I was wrong.

-- Ms. Eavan BOLAND

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• Ms. Eavan BOLAND - "Fond Memory" (contemp.) Dublin>England>USA by "Jean R." <>