"Recall the Quadrille. Hum the Waltz./ Promenade on the yachtclub terraces."(Boland 14) The tone of this second stanza of the poem "The Dolls Museum of Dublin" outlines the sense of innocence. These are the days of women in big dresses, dancing to orchestras playing at balls, and men in smashing tuxedos with sashes of patriotic loyalty across their chests. These are vivid memories of

But futures are certain to an extent. "For years I have known/ how important it is/ not to name/ the coffins, the murdered in them,/ the deaths in alleyways and on doorsteps--/ in case they rise out of their names/ and I recognize/ the child who slept peacefully/ and the girl who guessed at her future in/ the dress as it came out of its box/ falling free in/ kick pleats of silk." (Boland 17) Separate lives, separate stories, yet the same destiny, same fate. This small sleeping boy and this young dreaming girl both fall victims to a violence that could never have been guessed at, as the girl tried so vainly to do.

"Look down you said: this was once a famine road." (Boland 7) Suddenly, the scene changes. No longer is she just on a carefree ride with her love, but he wants her to know something, something not only about them. He wants her to know something about history, something about pain. This is something that is real, that cannot be changed, although its memory has been diminished by time. "you told/ me in the second winter of their ordeal, in/ 1847, when the crop had failed twice,/ Relief Committees gave/ the starving Irish roads to build./ Where they died, there the road ended..." (Boland 7) There is that moment in a person's life where she stops to think about truth and reality, inside and out. In Boland's other poems, this time came with force, with harsh brutality and violence that gave those people no choice but to face the facts. But this in this poem, Boland takes a different approach and examines the idea that just a word, an idea, a story can tell so much more than violence ever will. Her world is changed, just by seeing those famine roads, roads that are never recognized on any map, roads that lead to nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. She has lost her innocence, but gained an insight that those victims of violence in her other poems did not have, not until it was too late.

good times and lavish parties. But there is another side to it all.

What kind of violence can be avoided? What kind of violence can be foreseen? Hindsight is twenty twenty, as the saying goes. Boland takes her task of recreating history very seriously. The tales that she weaves of violence and suffering are as much a part of Irish history and folklore as Saint Patrick and leprechauns. For freedom to be won, for justice to be done, lives must be lost, and sacrifices must be made. But in the eyes of a child, in the eyes of people celebrating the holiest day in the Catholic year, and the eyes of a young lover on a drive, these are trivialities. Better to be innocent and carefree than fearful an

Some common words found in the essay are:
Inscriptions Party, Easter April, Relief Committees, Cartography Limited, Saint Patrick, Eireann Document, Officers Boland, Eavan Boland, Museum Dublin, Dublin Boland, boland 14, boland 17, loss innocence, boland 7, dolls museum, document 1, fight irish freedom, science cartography, found land, cartography limited, sacrifice boland 14, victims violence, science cartography limited, april 24 1916, poem science cartography,
Approximate Word count = 1761
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)