This Moment 1994
- Rhyme & Form: Free Verse
- Tone: Female point of view, Tender
- Imagery: Nature, Cosmos
- Themes: Life as a Woman, Relationships, Motherhood, Moment in Time
- Poetic Techniques: Repetition, Alliteration, Assonance, Sibilance1
Boland writes here about a specific ‘Moment’ – a brief history in life. Boland is the onlooker and studies the scene carefully and slowly; this shows in the short sentences that are chosen very carefully. The poem has twelve full-stops and ten individual lines of the poem end with a full-stop, most of the sentences are short – two or three words.
Boland chooses the setting carefully: ‘A neighbourhood’ – this could be any neighbourhood as Boland does not associate herself with the scene by saying ‘My’ or ‘Our’ or ‘Your’ – in this way the poet does not see the scene alone, she invites us to view it with her. We must take into consideration Boland’s home at the time – she is living in the suburbs of Dublin and thus would know the ins and outs of every household in her ‘neighbourhood’.
A neighbourhood.
At dusk.
Boland informs us of the time and place in two very short sentences. The disregard for conventional grammar is important here as it allows the reader to read in a calming manner thus reproducing the actual feeling of the moment in time. Dusk seems to be an important time for Boland (it occurs in Love and The Pomegranate also) – it represents a mode of quietness and symbolically it brings closure to the events of the day. Boland anticipates:
Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.
Boland observes that soon the stars will come out, bringing the moths and eventually new growth as the fruit expands:
Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.
We move from looking at the night-sky to the fluttering of moths to the slanting rinds around fruit. Boland shows us the things are going to happen ‘out of sight’ and perhaps evoking some suspense in the reader Boland calls a halt to the flow of the poem by telling us that these things will happen ‘but not yet’. We are invited to pause and perhaps dwell on the setting and then the poet presents us with two images:
One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.
Boland gives strong, contrasting colours bringing to mind a silhouette painting – the simile ‘yellow as butter’ gives a homely presence to the rest of the poem. Boland now focuses more on the neighbourhood that was introduced in the first stanza and gives us an image of a mother and a child:
A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.
This is the ‘moment’ that Boland has been building up to – note the contrast in language: prior to this scene we were building up to a moment, the language was slow-moving and relaxing and then suddenly there is movement in the child running to the mother but also note that this is the longest line in the poem. This is a loving moment between parent and child and it seems as though creation (the very things mentioned previously) is celebrating the moment:
Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.
The gentle mood of the poem is achieved in part by the ‘s’ sounds and repetition: dusk/sight/Stars/moths/rinds/slanting/leans/arms/rise/Apples/sweeten and then also by how both the lines and maybe more importantly the spaces are presented on the page.
There is something in this moment that has drawn Boland in, the moment is beautifully visualised as an embrace of sweetness, richness and love between a mother and a child. The poem builds quietly to this moment of crescendo before spilling over into a series of affirmations: stars do rise, moths do flutter, apples do sweeten and mothers do love their children.
Damien Gallagher
