My friend The Swede sent me this one Just Today. She sends wonderful poems. And for the world of memory that is always tugging at the corners of my mind, this one seemed particularly appropriate.
We are Always Too Late
Memory
Is in two parts.
First the re-visiting:
the way even now I can see
those lovers at the café table. She is weeping.
It is New England, breakfast time, winter. Behind her,
outside the picture window, is
a stand of white pines.
New snow falls and the old,
losing its balance in the branches,
showers down,
adding fractions to it. Then
The re-enactment. Always that.
I am getting up, pushing away
coffee. Always I am going towards her.
The flush and scald is
to her forehead now, and back down to her neck.
I raise one hand. I am pointing to
those trees, I am showing her our need for these
beautiful upstagings of
what we suffer by
what survives. And she never even sees me.
Eavan Boland
