Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?

I miss our old city—
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting under
fanlights and low skies to go home in it—Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
where we come from

they gave their sorrow a name and drowned it.

Copyright © 2006 Eavan Boland All rights reserved
from The New Republic
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission