WEBVTT

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The second poem I'll read to
you is just a short little poem

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by Eavan Boland from
"The Lost Land."

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It's called "Habitual Grief."

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Long ago, I was a child
in a strange country.

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I was Irish in England.

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I learned a second
language there,

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which has stood me in
good stead, the lingua

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franca of a lost land, a
dialect in which what had never

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been could still be found, that
infinite horizon, always far

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and impossible, that
contrary passion to be whole.

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This is what language
is, a habitual grief,

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a turn of speech for the
everyday and ordinary abrasion

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of losses, such as this, which
hurts just enough to be a scar,

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and heals just enough
to be a nation.

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