《論暴力及女性所受之暴力》中的#AmINEXT

Art of Empire
--Eavan Boland in 《A Woman Without A Country》

If no one in my family ever spoke of it, 
if no one handed down
what it was to be born to power
and married in a poor country. 

If no one wanted to remember
the noise of the redcoats cantering
in lanes bleached with apple flowers
on an April morning. 

If no one ever mentioned how a woman was, 
what she did, 
what she never did again,
when she lived in a dying Empire.

If what was not said was never seen
If what was never seen could not be known
think of this as the only way
an empire could recede --

taking its laws, its horses and its lordly all,
leaving a single art to be learned,
and one that required 
neither a silversmith nor a glassblower

but a woman skilled in the sort of silence
that lets her stitch shadow flowers
into linen with pastel silks
who never looks up

to remark on or remember why it is
the bird in her blackwork is warning her:
not a word not a word
not a word not a word.