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Eavan Aisling Boland - Quarantine

2014-11-08 9 Dailymotion

In the worst hour of the worst season <br /> of the worst year of a whole people <br />a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. <br />He was walking – they were both walking – north. <br /> <br />She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. <br /> He lifted her and put her on his back. <br />He walked like that west and west and north. <br />Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived. <br /> <br />In the morning they were both found dead. <br /> Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history. <br />But her feet were held against his breastbone. <br />The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her. <br /> <br />Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. <br /> There is no place here for the inexact <br />praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body. <br />There is only time for this merciless inventory: <br /> <br />Their death together in the winter of 1847. <br /> Also what they suffered. How they lived. <br />And what there is between a man and woman. <br />And in which darkness it can best be proved.<br /><br />Eavan Aisling Boland<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/quarantine-4/

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