Poetry Friday--"Lace"

Eavan Boland signed a copy of her book, An Origin Like Water, Collected Poems 1967 - 1987 two weeks ago at the Dodge Poetry Festival. I've been slowly making my way through the volume and have found at least two that I've already shared on Poetry Fridays, either here, or at Random Noodling. But for today, I've chosen one that's new to me. It is one that recalled photographs from Lewis Hine in the Library of Congress's National Child Labor Committee Collection. The photos inspired me to write a poem and post, which you'll find here.

Captioned: Antoinette Fazzino, ten years old, makes Irish lace for collars and waists, after school. Her younger brother (by the stove) said, "Lace is too dam-cheap." Antoinette wears glasses. 303 E. 149th Street, N.Y. Location: New York, New York (State)
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Lace
by Eavan Boland

Bent over
the open notebook--

light fades out
making the 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 shakes 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.

Head over to the Round-Up being held at TeacherDance.

--Diane