risks another death as she provides yet another representation or
misrepresentation of femininity; third, with only misrepresentation
available, she takes the female figure into yet another death or
ënothingnessí that is imagined in terms of silence or a beyond of
writing. Bolandís poems unlike her essays, notice how identity and
notions of the authentic function by misrepresentation, so that
ëWomaní and ëNationí are never fully present to themselves but part
of the noise of myth, which is why she eventually turns to the
dissolution of gender, nation and her ëvoiceí. If ëAnna Liffeyí were
the last poem written by Boland, her posthumous ending (ëI was a
voiceí), would be far more effective.
Boland has written further poems repeating similar concerns as
in ëWitnessí from The Lost Land when the speaker asks:
What is a colony
if not the brutal truth
that when we speak
the graves open.
And the dead walk?^52The ëbrutal truthí of ëa colonyí is that in speaking (and in writing in
English), violence is remembered or reawakened; representation is
thus a ëwitnessí to death and self erasure. Although The Lost Land is
dedicated to Mary Robinson as the woman ëwho found ití, this
assertion rings hollow in a collection where there is no indication of
the lost land being found. Instead, what we get are yet more images of
loss in the vein of ëAnna Liffeyí of: ëMy Country in Darknessí, ëa city
of shadowsí, ëthe men and womení ëdispossessedí. In ëThe Harbourí
as in ëAnna Liffeyí, Boland sets herself up as the national ëcitizení
who is ëready to recordí the ëcontradictionsí of this place. However, as
ëDaughters of a Colonyí suggests, there is ë[n]o testament or craft of
mine can hide our presence/ on the distaff of historyí or on the Irish
female side, in a place that ënever quite was: their homeí.
In ëThe Scarí Boland turns to Anna Livia once more to notice
how the ëIrish rainí softens the features of her ëgranite faceí which
hints at the dissolution of monumentality that comes at the end when
she asks:
52 Boland, ëWitnessí, The Lost Land, p.15.