Athene’s Song
for my father

From my father’s head I sprung
Goddess of the war, created
Partisan and soldiers’ physic –
My symbols boast and brazen gong –
Until I made in Athens wood
Upon my knees a new music.

When I played my pipe of bone,
Robbed and whittled from a stag,
Every bird became a lover
Every lover to its tone
Found the truth of song and brag;
Fish sprung in the full river.

Peace became the toy of power
When other noises broke my sleep.
Like dreams I saw the hot ranks
And heroes in another flower
Than any there; I dropped my pipe
Remembering their shouts, their thanks.

Beside the water, lost and mute,
Lies my pipe and like my mind
Remains unknown, remains unknown
And in some hollow taking part
With my heart against my hand
Holds its peace and holds its own.

New Selected Poems includes the key poems from Eavan Boland’s remarkable half century of writing. It began with 23 Poems in 1962 and it has continued through more than a dozen collections, each finding new dimensions in language, history and in the body subject to passion and to time. She is indeed, as Elaine Feinstein described her in Poetry Review, ‘one of the finest and boldest poets of the last half-century’. Her critical writing, her poetry and example have made an emancipating difference to writing in Ireland. She remarked in an interview in 2000, ‘women are now writing the Irish poem across a very big register of new tones, new subjects, new approaches […], I think I was one of the poets who became convinced of the need for change.’