Show me your hand. I see our past,
Your palm roughened by heat, by frost.
By pulling a crop out of the earth
By lifting a cauldron off the hearth.
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By stripping rushes dipped in fat
To make a wick make a rush light.
That was your world: your entry to
Our ancestry in our darkest century.
Ghost-sufferer, our ghost-sister
Remind us now again that history
changes in one moment with one mind.
That it belongs to us, to all of us.
As we mark these hundred years
We will not leave you behind.
No one is left behind or should be
As we honour this centenary:
A hundred years ago a woman’s vote
Becoming law became the right
Of Irish women. We remember them
As we celebrate this freedom.
Freedom is not abstract, is not a concept,
Is not an ethic only nor a precept.
It can also be a hope raised then defeated
Then renewed. It can be a voice braided
Into the silences of other women
Who came before. Today we note
The achievement of Irish suffragists.
As we mark the act, the law, the vote
We honour also the hours of doubt,
The years of work. Today we offer
To these women our thanks.
Here we say some of their names
To honour all of their names:
Louie Bennett
Cissie Cahalan
Helen Chenevix
Charlotte Despard
Louise Gavan Duffy
Eva Gore-Booth
Anna Haslam
Kathleen Lynn
Mary MacSwiney
Helena Molony
Florence Moon
Sarah Persse
Constance Markievicz
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington
Louisa Todhunter
Jenny Wyse Power
Imagine these women
Gathering one by one in Irish cities
Late in 1918. In a cold winter.
Each of them ready to enter
History: called to their duties
As citizens to exercise
This hard-won right: this franchise.
They vote in the shadow of their past.
They vote in the light of what will be
Their new nation whose quest
For freedom speaks to their own.
If we could only summon
Or see them these women,
Foremothers of the nurture
And dignity that will come
To all of us from this day
We could say across the century
To each one—give me your hand:
It has written our future.
Our future will become
The past of other women.
Our island that was once
Settled and removed on the edge
Of Europe is now a bridge
To the world. And so we share
This day with women everywhere.
For those who find the rights they need
To be hard won, not guaranteed,
Not easily given, for each one
We have a gift, a talisman:
The memory of these Irish women
Who struggled and prevailed.
For whose sake we choose
These things from their date
To honour, to remember and to celebrate:
All those who called for it,
The vote for women.
All those who had the faith
That voices can be raised. Can be heard.
All those who saw their hopes
Become the law. All those who woke
In a new state flowering
From an old nation and found
Justice no longer blind.
Inequity set aside.
And freedom re-defined.
CREDITS
EAVAN BOLAND is an Irish poet and author whose work deals with Irish national identity and the role of women in Irish history. She has received a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry; an American-Ireland Fund Literary Award; the Corrington Medal for Literary Excellence; the Bucknell Medal of Distinction; and a PEN Award for creative nonfiction for a collection of her essays. She is currently Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and Melvin and Bill Lane Professor and Director of the Creative Writing program at Stanford University.
PAULA MCGLOIN is a Dublin-based illustrator and surface pattern designer. She illustrated the book All Through the Night by Marie Heaney, shortlisted in two categories at the Irish Book Awards 2016. Paula is a member of Illustrators Guild of Ireland and the Association of Illustrators (UK).
Commissioned by the Government of Ireland’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations and the Royal Irish Academy to commemorate women winning the right to vote and casting their first ballot on December 14th, 1918.
A special limited hardback edition of the poem by Eavan Boland illustrated by Paula McGloin is exclusively available from the Royal Irish Academy