The second poem I'll read to you is just a short little poem
by Eavan Boland from "The Lost Land."
It's called "Habitual Grief."
Long ago, I was a child in a strange country.
I was Irish in England.
I learned a second language there,
which has stood me in good stead, the lingua
franca of a lost land, a dialect in which what had never
been could still be found, that infinite horizon, always far
and impossible, that contrary passion to be whole.
This is what language is, a habitual grief,
a turn of speech for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses, such as this, which hurts just enough to be a scar,
and heals just enough to be a nation.