Monday, December 12
A HABITABLE 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 habitable grief. A turn of speech for the everyday and ordinary abrasion of losses such as this: which hurts just enough to be scar. And heals just enough to be a nation. (Eavan Boland)