CONTINGENCIES Waiting in the kitchen for power cuts, on this wet night, sorting candles, feeling the tallow, brings back to me the way women spoke in my childhood -- with a sweet mildness in front of company, or with a private hunger in whispered kisses or with the crisis-bright words which meant you and you alone were their object -- "Stop that." "Wait till I get you." "Dry those tears." I stand the candles in jam jars lined in a row on the table, scalded and dried with a glass cloth; which all last summer were crammed with the fruits of neighborly gardens; stoned plums and damsons, loganberries. -- Eavan BOLAND born Dublin, Ireland, 1944. She has taught at Trinity College, University College, and Bowdoin College, and was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She has published several volumes of poetry, and her poems and essays have appeared in magazines such as 'The New Yorker,' the 'Atlantic,' 'Ploughshares,' the 'Paris Review,' and the 'American Poetry Review.' She reviews for the 'Irish Times,' lives in Dublin with her family. This poem is from "Outside History, selected poems - 1980-1990." (W. W. Norton/1990.