Night Feed by Eavan Boland
Reflection by Aoife Twohig
Dr. Aoife Twohig
A reflection on the poem Night Feed, by Eavan Boland.
The poem Night Feed was published as part of a collection of poetry also entitled Night Feed by renowned Irish poet Eavan Boland in 1982. A lyrical and feminist poet, Boland’s themes of love, motherhood, womanhood, relationships and national identity are among the themes revisited throughout her life’s work.
I first discovered the poem some-time after my own children were babies, and after hearing of the poet’s death in 2020. When I read the poem I was moved deeply by the words and imagery which evoked personal memories of moments, as a baby awoke from sleep, beckoning me from mine, to be held, comforted, fed and settled. Boland beautifully captures the awe that can transfigure these moments, everyday occurrences that serve to fasten all of our existences, whether as infant or parent.
The poem illustrates beautifully and profoundly the ordinary devotion of the mother to her baby daughter. The setting, a nursery at dawn, is made almost magical, the hour when light begins to illuminate the world. For me this echoes the experience of the birth of a baby, when, the world itself is made new by the arrival of a new person. This is highlighted again later in the poem as the baby, having been fed, opens her eyes, “birth-coloured and offended”. This to me signifies that from the moment of birth, we are grappling with beginnings and endings, reunions and partings, togetherness and separation. How these everyday struggles are received, and responded to helps us to navigate these inevitable ruptures over time.
The connection between the mother and infant during the feed is one of awe and ‘sacramental’. Patricia Boyle Haberstroh has described how Boland’s ‘shared moments sanctify an ordinary interior and the value of motherhood’. This theme of the ordinary and everyday experiences in the lives of women is one that Boland through her experience of motherhood and womanhood, in her poetry, sought to communicate. These ordinary moments are made timeless, ‘defining truth about women’s lives’ (Haberstroh, P. B, 1993).
The poem embodies a brief moment, yet captures the movement of time. There is a sense of time passing, future parting, the present closeness with the infant made even more precious. The passage of time is poignantly described as the ‘long fall from grace’.
The intermingling of feelings evoked in the mother is not shied away from as the mother greets her infant to ’drown our sorrows’. As she lifts and feels the baby in her arms, she experiences a sense of heightened emotion and becomes ‘the best I can be’.
Nature is also central to the poem, the dawn creates a world of life, where birds awaken, daisies open and ‘mercurial rainwater/ Makes a mirror for sparrows’. This image for me also highlights a theme of reflection and the gaze, how the mother’s gaze receives that of the infant, and as Winnicott described, her infants own image is reflected to her in her mother’s gaze, and so the relationship develops. Boland returned to use the image of the mirror in her poetry, signifying the significance of this reflective process.
The everyday routine is life is sustaining, of picking up, holding, feeding, putting back to sleep. These are activities so often taken for granted in society that yet ensure our survival. The nursery becomes an interior reflection of the world, where ‘dear life’ ‘holds on’. Boland values the everyday activity of mothers in sustaining life. These themes recur in Boland’s work.
In the same collection of poetry, a later poem “Fruit on a Straight-Sided Tray”, the artistic still-life is seen to reflect the mother-child relationship, the ‘space between’ the assembled still life objects as revelatory as the objects themselves. The poem, Night Feed, for me, illuminates the ordinary and everyday moments between a mother and infant which are profound and life giving, honouring the time that a baby needs and depends upon this nurturance, a nurturance which sustains over a lifetime.
The poem Night Feed is presented with kind permission for reproduction from Eavan Boland’s collection Night Feed granted by Carnacet Press.
Boland, E., (1982)(reprinted 1990). Night Feed. Carnacet.
Haberstroh, P.B. (1993). Woman, Artist and Image in “Night Feed”. Irish University Review, 23(1), 67-74.
Winnicott, D. W. (1967). Mirror-role of mother and family in child development. P. Lomas (ed), The Predicament of theFamily: A Psycho-analytical Symposium. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Night Feed
By Eavan Boland
This is dawn.
Believe me
This is your season, little daughter:
The moment daisies open,
The hour mercurial rainwater
Makes a mirror for sparrows.
It's time we drowned our sorrows.
I tiptoe in.
I lift you up
Wriggling
In your rosy, zipped sleeper.
Yes this is the hour
For the early bird and me
When finder is keeper.
I crook the bottle.
How you suckle!
This is the best I can be:
Housewife
To this nursery
Where you hold on,
Dear life.
A silt of milk.
The last suck.
And now your eyes are open
Birth-coloured and offended.
Earth wakes.
You go back to sleep.
The feed is ended.
Worms turn.
Stars go in.
Even the moon is losing face.
Poplars stilt for dawn
And we begin
The long fall from grace.
I tuck you in.
Dr. Aoife Twohig is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist specialising in Paediatric Liaison Psychiatry at Children’s Health Ireland, Temple St. in Dublin. Aoife became interested in early emotional development through her Masters in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and in particular infant observation and subsequently completed a PhD in the area of attachment and preterm birth. Aoife is part of a group of clinicians developing infant mental health initiatives within Children’s Health Ireland in order to promote this area, particularly for infants with medical needs and their parents.