Secrets

By Eavan Boland

This article appeared in the December 11, 2006 edition of The Nation.

November 22, 2006

Your coffin was so small,
Only I knew it was full of
candlewick bedspreads,
orange pekoe tea leaves
smoking chimneys over wet peat;

that steam rose there from
sweet winter herbs and pearl
onions and marrow bones
boiling all one afternoon
on the oven top in a stock pot,

and if I add the bolt of silk
you once brought home and
rolled out on a table, showing
the gloomy colour pewter becomes
by candlelight, it is because

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