Outside History by Eavan Boland
Reflection by Dr. Anne-Marie Casey
Dr. Anne-Marie Casey
When Kevin asked me to submit a poem, so many poems came to mind that had made an imprint on me over the years. Some poems are etched lines such as those in T.S. Elliot’s The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock when he says ‘time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair’ which powerfully speaks to the self-consciousness of Prufrock. There are also lines etched from Leaving Certificate days of poetry in Secondary School reading Yeats ‘That is no country for old men’ in his poem Sailing to Byzantium. Further memories are fond, fond memories of hearing Seamus Heaney and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill reading from collections of their poetry in a renovated shed in West Cork or reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales while studying music in college in Canterbury.
However, one poem stands out and that I continue to circle back to is Eavan Boland’s poem, Outside History. I first read it in college in Canterbury and was struck how the poem spoke to the lifetime of a star, women in Irish History and wider history. The stars are symbols of timelessness which are very far away. In this poem, Eavan Boland speaks to the past suffering of Irish people on the ‘famine road’. Women in particular were situated outside history, even the word history being the story of his to be told. I think it is important to acknowledge the weight of our history in Ireland. In particular, the stories of the Irish women and babies who went through the laundries and mother baby homes who deserve to be remembered. Even though Ireland was not unique in having mother baby homes, we likely had the highest proportion in the world. These women were forced to leave their homes, work long hours and be separated from their children and families. It was not until 2013 that the Irish State issued a state apology for the human rights violations endured by the women and children incarcerated in the laundries, though efforts continue to ensure the re-telling of the stories of these women and children for future generations. Let this poem have no relevance in years to come as women no longer sit outside history and outside “his”stories but inside history moving forward.
Outside History
By Eavan Boland
These are outsiders, always. These stars—
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened
thousands of years before
our pain did; they are, they have always been
outside history.
They keep their distance. Under them remains
a place where you found
you were human, and
a landscape in which you know you are mortal.
And a time to choose between them.
I have chosen:
out of myth in history I move to be
part of that ordeal
who darkness is
only now reaching me from those fields,
those rivers, those roads clotted as
firmaments with the dead.
How slowly they die
as we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear.
And we are too late. We are always too late.
Dr Anne-Marie Casey is a Senior Clinical Psychologist in Paediatric Cardiology at Children’s Health Ireland Hospital in Dublin. Anne-Marie has a keen interest in perinatal and infant mental health, the use of the NBO with high risk infants and compassion focussed therapy approaches to her clinical work. Anne-Marie lectures on Attachment, Infant Mental Health and working in Paediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. Along with her clinical interests, Anne-Marie is active in research, recently publishing “You lose confidence in being a human being, let alone a parent: the experience of parenting with a spinal cord injury in Ireland”. Anne-Marie is Chair of the Special Interest Group in Perinatal and Infant Mental Health) with the Psychological Society of Ireland and is Vice Chair of the Special Interest Group in Paediatric Psychology with the Psychological Society of Ireland.