Reminder:
A countable set of countable sets is countable.

For the file cabinet -- in Paris with you.

Refuge

Inhospitable land, inhospitable people.
—Guidebook, Aran Islands

I was going there for its widows
or its history of widows,
concentration of them on that island
where men once fished the North Atlantic
alone, only work there was with the land
stone. Each in his curragh, rowing—
sometimes for days—while the women waited
for them to return. To go back out.
A woman could go mad in that place.

I was going there
where monoliths to men lost at sea
line roads, the history of widows
cut in stone. In the soul
patterns of dread—men present, then not—
passed mother to child. These women
who knit in doorways. At row's end,
turning the piece to purl. Stitches
named for things of land: seed, moss,
blackberry. Sweaters taking shape.

I went there
a widow, the women still knitting
though now for tourists, same family
patterns, no two alike. (How else
know the body washed up?) These women
holding needles the way their mothers—
and their mothers before them—did,
giving shape to their prayers, each row
a rosary, naming the body.

I stayed
a week though I could not speak
the language. In earlier times
those caught using Gaelic
had the tips of their tongues cut off.
That terror—what could be lost if
the heart spoke—can be passed down,
silence a people, make a stone
(widow that I am) feel at home.

-- Moira Linehan