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This poem is taken from PN Review 137, Volume 27 Number 3, January - February 2001.

Irish Poetry Eavan Boland

for Michael Hartnett

We always knew there was no Orpheus in Ireland.
No music stored at the doors of hell.
No god to make it.
No wild beasts to weep and lie down to it.

But I remember an evening when the sky
was underworld-dark at four.

When ice had seized every part of the city
and we sat talking
...


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