Energies
This is my time:
the twilight closing in,
a hissing on the ring,
stove noises, kettle steam
But the energy of flowers!
Their faces are so white –
my garden daisies –
they are so tight-fisted,
such economies of light.
In the dusk they have made hay:
in a banked radiance,
in an acreage of brightness
they are misering the day
while mine delays away
in chores left to do:
the soup, the bath, the fire
then bed-time,
up the stairs –
and there, there
the buttery curls,
the light,
the bran-fur of the teddy bear,
the fist like a night-time daisy,
damp and tight.
by Eavan Boland
from New Collected Poems, Carcanet, 2005.