Eavan Boland

Question 1

The famine road

Answer 1

“Idle as trout in light Colonel Jones, these Irish give them no coins at all, their bones need toul”
“Roads” “going nowhere”
“They not blood their knuckles on rock such April hailstones for water”
“Barren never to know the load of his child in you, what is your body if not a famine road?”
“Wretches work till they are quite worn”
Treveleyan

Question 2

The war horse

Answer 2

“about the clip clip casual”
“Loosened from its daily tether in the tinker camp on the Enniskerry road”
“Corpses, remote, crushed, mutilated”
“We are safe, our unformed fear of Fierce commitment gone; why should we care”
Closing “of curtains”

Question 3

The Black lace fan my mother gave me

Answer 3

“buying it for five francs in the Galeries/ in pre-war Paris”
“Wild roses appliquéd on silk by hand”
“Inference of its violation”
“The past is an empty café terrace”

Question 4

The Pomegranate

Answer 4

Mythical allusion Ceres and Persephone
“plucked a pomegranate”
“It is winter and the stars are hidden”
“The place of death”
“She will wake up. She will hold/ the papery flushed skin in her hand”
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.