The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me

It was the first gift he ever gave her,
buying it for five francs in the Galeries
in pre-war Paris. It was stifling.
A starless drought made the nights stormy.

They stayed in the city for the summer.
They met in cafes. She was always early.
He was late. That evening he was later.
They wrapped the fan. He looked at his watch.

She looked down the Boulevard des Capucines.
She ordered more coffee. She stood up.
The streets were emptying. The heat was killing.
She thought the distance smelled of rain and lightning.

These are wild roses, appliqued on silk by hand,
darkly picked, stitched boldly, quickly.
The rest is tortoiseshell and has the reticent clear patience
of its element. It is

a worn-out, underwater bullion and it keeps,
even now, an inference of its violation.
The lace is overcast as if the weather
it opened for and offset had entered it.

The past is an empty cafe terrace.
An airless dusk before thunder. A man running.
And no way to know what happened then—
none at all—unless ,of course, you improvise:

The blackbird on this first sultry morning,
in summer, finding buds, worms, fruit,
feels the heat. Suddenly she puts out her wing—
the whole, full, flirtatious span of it.

                I like this poem because it is a story and the poem’s purpose is conveyed through the story’s details. After the first stanza I was easily imagining the scene, and Boland’s carefully selected words facilitated my visualization of the couple meeting at a café in Paris. The poem forced me to reflect on my own parents' lives and emotions. I thought about how I know my parents mannerisms well and I know many facts about them, but the truth is a huge portion of their lives occurred without me and I can never truly know what they felt or experienced when they were young.

                This poem contains seven quatrains and does not follow a strict metric form throughout but a good number of lines do follow iambic pentameter. For instance, the first line is in iambic pentameter and the flow of the line sets the scene and subtly introduces the subject. And it indisputably ties the fan to the man. The reader initially believes they will read a poem about a woman’s mother but the first line changes track and introduces a potential love poem. The second and third stanzas use quick little observations to describe the events. It gives the poem a staccato sound through choppy, slightly disconnected sentences. Boland seems to be giving the harried details of the couple’s love affair. These stanzas contrast with the fourth stanza, which is taken up by a slow, detailed description of the fan. This emphasizes the importance of the fan, not the activities. Again, Boland uses an enjambment, this one in fact located between two stanzas. The enjambment connects the two stanzas that describe the fan but also contrasts them. The fourth stanza lovingly depicts a beautiful, intricately embroidered fan while the fifth stanza describes a fan that has grown old with time just as the couple’s love probably faded over time. The fan is beautiful but is spoiled by the humid weather, and I believe that Boland uses the enjambment to show how the couple’s love could be similar to the fan and was also ruined by some bad storms.