Lines for a Lockdown: in memory of Eavan Boland

Energies

This is my time:
the twilight closing in,
a hissing on the ring,
stove noises, kettle steam

and children’s kisses.

But the energy of flowers!
Their faces are so white –
my garden daisies –
they are so tight-fisted,
such economies of light.

In the dusk they have made hay:
in a banked radiance,
in an acreage of brightness
they are misering the day
while mine delays away

in chores left to do:
the soup, the bath, the fire
then bed-time,
up the stairs –
and there, there

the buttery curls,
the light,
the bran-fur of the teddy bear,
the fist like a night-time daisy,
damp and tight.

by Eavan Boland

from New Collected Poems, Carcanet, 2005.