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Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained | |||
"What We Lost" by Eavan Boland is a reflective and deeply moving poem that explores themes of memory, loss, and the transmission of stories and traditions across generations. Boland uses a domestic scene, rich with sensory detail and historical resonance, to delve into the ways in which personal and collective histories are preserved, altered, and sometimes forgotten over time. The poem is set on a "winter afternoon" with "frozen" hills and "failing" light, immediately establishing a mood of introspection and quietude. The central figure, a countrywoman mending linen in her kitchen, is a conduit to the past. She is surrounded by objects that are imbued with memory and meaning—lavender in muslin, letters and mementos, satin, gaberdine, worsted, cambric bodices, and tobacco silk. These items are tangible connections to a bygone era, each carrying stories of love, loss, and daily life. As the woman sews, the "sugar-feel of flax" in her hands, the arrival of dusk prompts the lighting of candles, transforming the kitchen into a space of storytelling. The presence of a child, who is the speaker's mother, introduces the theme of generational transmission. The woman's decision to share a story at this moment highlights the importance of oral tradition in preserving family and cultural histories. The poem then shifts to a moment of profound significance—the telling of the story. Boland writes, "Believe it, / what we lost is here in this room / on this veiled evening." This assertion underscores the idea that what is lost—whether it be people, places, or ways of life—is not entirely gone; it persists in the stories we tell and the memories we keep. However, the poem also acknowledges the fragility of this preservation. The story ends, the child moves away, and the moment, though charged with meaning, "hangs fire, leads nowhere." The closing stanzas of the poem contemplate the eventual fading of light, the forgetting of the story, and the encroaching darkness of the fields. This imagery serves as a metaphor for the inevitable passage of time and the erosion of memory. The "frail connections" between past and present are made and then broken, and the "dumb-show of legend" that becomes language is on the verge of becoming silence once more. Boland's meditation on the transformation of "words" into "possibilities and disappointments" is a poignant reflection on the power and limitations of language to capture and convey the richness of human experience. The poem laments the loss of a world where personal and familial narratives were woven into the fabric of everyday life, "scented closets filled with love letters and memories and lavender hemmed into muslin." "What We Lost" is a lament for the ephemeral nature of memory and the ways in which the stories and traditions that define us can slip away, leaving behind only traces of their former presence. Boland's poem is a call to remember, to cherish the "griefless peace" of childhood and the "hands and whispers" that once filled the rooms of our lives, even as we acknowledge the inexorable drift towards silence and forgetting.
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