Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.
But not yet.
One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.
A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.
Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

~ Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland is an Irish poet and feminist, born in 1944 in Dublin.  Her father was a career diplomat (as well as Irish ambassador to the UK for a time) while her mother was a well-known post-expressionist painter.  This perhaps explains Eavan’s talent and interest in making political statements through the art of poetry. 

When Eavan was 6 years old, her family moved to England when her father was made ambassador.  The anti-Irish sentiments she then experienced in London heavily influenced her writing and strengthened her identity as an Irish woman.  Her recollection of this time period can be found in her poem, “An Irish Childhood in England: 1951”.

Eavan’s poems have been inspired by circumstances in Irish history, such as the famine and  The Troubles,  and it is said that her experience of being both a wife and a mother have shaped her poems (ordinary situations provide the frame for greater social and historical meanings).

But Eavan is perhaps best known for shedding light on the struggles faced by women in a male-dominated literary world.

Photo:  "Mother and Child" by painter Mary Cassett (1844-1926).