In the end
It will not matter
That I was a woman. I am sure of it.
The body is a source. Nothing more.
There is a time for it. There is a certainty
About the way it seeks its own dissolution.
Consider rivers.
They are always en route to
Their own nothingness. From the first moment
They are going home. And so
When language cannot do it for us,
Cannot make us know love will not diminish us,
There are these phrases
Of the ocean
To console us.
Particular and unafraid of their completion.
In the end
Everything that burdened and distinguished me
Will be lost in this:
I was a voice.
*from Irish poet, author and professor Eavan Boland, whose wiki is linked here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eavan_Boland. Happy Day of the Dead, or, if you insist, All Saints Day. Boland was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, which has been in existence since 1592; one delicious and. damning detail from her life and after-life is as follows: In 2024, Trinity College Dublin announced the renaming of the “denamed” former Berkeley Library as the Eavan Boland Library; this makes it the first building named after any woman on Trinity’s city centre campus (only 433 years post-founding!). The name was made official in March 2025. Better late than never?