thoughts on an Irish poem...

Thoughts on “Swineherd” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanán
from 'Voices and Poetry of Ireland, pp. 76-77

She says [after retirement]:

‘…I want to lie awake at night
Listening to cream crawling to the top of the jug
And the water lying soft in the cistern…’

and I continue:

I don’t want to lie awake at night
anymore listening to the orange bedroom walls
rearrange themselves [anew]
for
I want to deeply sleep at night
dreaming of dancing in a parquet-floored studio
and count out each new step
but
I can want and then can fail
to fulfill this destiny [alone] without any help or
guidance from earthly powers
and
I do want to be so alive again
that retirement becomes an age where one can
sleep or dream or be or not!