Century

Eavan Boland Poem

Our future will become the past of other women

Sat Dec 15 2018 - 01:30

Show me your hand. I see our past,

Your palm roughened by heat, by frost.

By pulling a crop out of the earth

By lifting a cauldron off the hearth.

READ MORE

By stripping rushes dipped in fat

To make a wick make a rush light.

That was your world: your entry to

Our ancestry in our darkest century.

Ghost-sufferer, our ghost-sister

Remind us now again that history

changes in one moment with one mind.

That it belongs to us, to all of us.

As we mark these hundred years

We will not leave you behind.

No one is left behind or should be

As we honour this centenary:

A hundred years ago a woman’s vote

Becoming law became the right

Of Irish women. We remember them

As we celebrate this freedom.

Freedom is not abstract, is not a concept,

Is not an ethic only nor a precept.

It can also be a hope raised then defeated

Then renewed. It can be a voice braided

Into the silences of other women

Who came before. Today we note

The achievement of Irish suffragists.

As we mark the act, the law, the vote

We honour also the hours of doubt,

The years of work. Today we offer

To these women our thanks.

Here we say some of their names

To honour all of their names:

Louie Bennett

Cissie Cahalan

Helen Chenevix

Charlotte Despard

Louise Gavan Duffy

Eva Gore-Booth

Anna Haslam

Kathleen Lynn

Mary MacSwiney

Helena Molony

Florence Moon

Sarah Persse

Constance Markievicz

Hanna Sheehy Skeffington

Louisa Todhunter

Jenny Wyse Power

Imagine these women

Gathering one by one in Irish cities

Late in 1918. In a cold winter.

Each of them ready to enter

History: called to their duties

As citizens to exercise

This hard-won right: this franchise.

They vote in the shadow of their past.

They vote in the light of what will be

Their new nation whose quest

For freedom speaks to their own.

If we could only summon

Or see them these women,

Foremothers of the nurture

And dignity that will come

To all of us from this day

We could say across the century

To each one—give me your hand:

It has written our future.

Our future will become

The past of other women.

Our island that was once

Settled and removed on the edge

Of Europe is now a bridge

To the world. And so we share

This day with women everywhere.

For those who find the rights they need

To be hard won, not guaranteed,

Not easily given, for each one

We have a gift, a talisman:

The memory of these Irish women

Who struggled and prevailed.

For whose sake we choose

These things from their date

To honour, to remember and to celebrate:

All those who called for it,

The vote for women.

All those who had the faith

That voices can be raised. Can be heard.

All those who saw their hopes

Become the law. All those who woke

In a new state flowering

From an old nation and found

Justice no longer blind.

Inequity set aside.

And freedom re-defined.

CREDITS

EAVAN BOLAND is an Irish poet and author whose work deals with Irish national identity and the role of women in Irish history. She has received a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry; an American-Ireland Fund Literary Award; the Corrington Medal for Literary Excellence; the Bucknell Medal of Distinction; and a PEN Award for creative nonfiction for a collection of her essays. She is currently Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and Melvin and Bill
Lane Professor and Director of the Creative Writing program at Stanford University.

PAULA MCGLOIN is a Dublin-based illustrator and surface pattern designer. She illustrated the book All Through the Night by Marie Heaney, shortlisted in two categories at the Irish Book Awards 2016. Paula is a member of Illustrators Guild of Ireland and the Association of Illustrators (UK).

Commissioned by the Government of Ireland’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations and the Royal Irish Academy to commemorate women winning the right to vote and casting their first ballot on December 14th, 1918.

A special limited hardback edition of the poem by Eavan Boland illustrated by Paula McGloin is exclusively available from the Royal Irish Academy