selection from "Anna Liffey" by Eavan Boland

In the end
It will not matter
That I was a woman. I am sure of it.
The body is a source. Nothing more.
There is a time for it. There is a certainty
About the way it seeks it own dissolution.
Consider rivers.
They are always en route to
Their own nothingness. From the first moment
They are going home. And so
when language cannot do it for us,
cannot make us know love will not diminish us,
there are these phrases
of the ocean
to console us.
Particular and unafraid of their completion.
In the end
everything that burdened and distinguished me
will be lost in this:
I was a voice.