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GUANTE: Next up, representing Morris Area High School,
Thomas McPhee
(applause)
THOMAS MCPHEE: Domestic Violence By Eavan Boland
1.
It was winter, lunar, wet. At dusk
Pewter seedlings became moonlight orphans.
Pleased to meet you meat to please you
said the butcher's sign in the window in the village.
Everything changed the year that we got married.
And after that we moved out to the suburbs.
How young we were, how ignorant, how ready
to think the only history was our own.
And there was a couple who quarreled into the night,
Their voices high, sharp: nothing is ever entirely
right in the lives of those who love each other.
2. In that season suddenly our
island Broke out its old sores for all
to see. We saw them too.
We stood there wondering how the salt horizons and the
Dublin hills, the rivers, table mountains,
Viking marshes we thought we knew
had been made to shiver into our ancient twelve by
fifteen television which gave them back as gray
and grayer tears and killings, killings,
killings, then moonlight-colored
funerals: nothing we said
not then, not later, fathomed what it is
is wrong in the lives of those who hate each other.
3. And if the provenance of memory
is only that-remember, not atone-
and if I can be safe in the weak spring light in that
kitchen, then why is there another kitchen,
spring light always darkening in it and
a woman whispering to a man over and over what else could
we have done? 4.
We failed our moment or our moment failed us.
The times were grand in size and we were small.
Why do I write that when I don't believe it?
We lived our lives, were happy, stayed as one.
Children were born and raised here
and are gone, including ours.
As for that couple did we ever find out who they were
and did we want to? I think we know. I think we
always knew.