pole to poleí, the female figure is stretched in a middle ground
between north and south, black and white, or between binaries which
is also evoked by the black and white speaker inbetween planets in
Bolandís ëThe Art of Griefí.^54
The line break between the fourth and final stanzas evokes the
sense of falling into the ëdeeper blacksí; a place ëway beyondí ëwhere
space roarsí like a river. It is curious that space should roar when it
tends to be associated with silence. Like the poem ëFallí, ëPolesí
imagines a beyond where ëdarkness found a voiceí. Darkness is
evocative of the pre-rational that evades enlightenment, existing at the
mindís limits or the ëweirs in the river of thoughtí. It is a space that is
unmappable since it is neither north nor south but somewhere at the
edges of understanding. The verse has to end at this point since this
dark space cannot be voiced in the poem. We only learn that darkness
has found a voice but not how this comes about. The poem looks to an
absence or silence ë[t]hat follows the poemís endí. Once again, the
poem can be compared with Paulinís ëAlmost Thereí, published in the
same year, where he imagines a ëspeechjoltí ëtravellingí ëthrough
darkness and moistureí.^55
The sentiment of Berkeleyís poem is that the human being is an
unsettled being which all expression unsettles.^56 Here, we can also
think back to the unsettled couple in ëFacts About Waterí who, like
the subject in ëPolesí, take a diasporic journey that results in a
scattered poetic narrative. They desire home or dry land via words yet
words take them into fluid dispersion. Unlike ëFacts About Waterí,
ëPolesí dives into the darkness without dreaming a boat with which to
navigate a line back to the land. Berkeleyís poetry disallows stable
boundaries and foundational modes of thought as she turns to fluidity.
54 Eavan Boland, ‘The Art of Grief’, Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet,
1995), pp.208–10.
55 Paulin, ‘Almost There’, p.21.
56 Cf. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans., Maria Jolas, Foreword
Etienne Gilson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, 1969), p.214.