The Fire Gilder

The Fire Gilder 

Eavan Frances Boland (September 24, 1944 – April 27, 2020)

She loved silver, she loved gold,

my mother. She spoke about the influence

of metals, the congruence of atoms,

the art classes where she learned

these things: think of it

she would say as she told me

to gild any surface a master craftsman

had to meld gold with mercury,

had to heat both so one was volatile,

one was not

and to do it right

had to separate them and then

burn, burn, burn mercury

until it fled and left behind

a skin of light. The only thing, she added—

but what came after that I forgot.

What she spent a lifetime forgetting

could be my subject:

the fenced-in small towns of Leinster,

the coastal villages where the language

of the sea was handed on,

phrases bruised by storms,

by shipwrecks. But isn’t.

My subject is the part wishing plays in

the way villages are made

to vanish, in the way I learned

to separate memory from knowledge,

so one was volatile, one was not

and how I started writing,

burning light,

building heat until all at once

I was the fire gilder

ready to lay radiance down,

ready to decorate it happened

with it never did when

all at once I remember what it was

she said: the only thing is

it is extremely dangerous.

Eavan Boland died in April, in Dublin at age 75.