| out·sid·er n. 1. a. One who is excluded from a party, association, or set. b. One who is isolated or detached from the activities or concerns of his or her own community. 2. A contestant given little chance of winning; a long shot. out·si  der·ness n. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
"You can be a rank insider
as well as a rank outsider."
(Robert Frost)
*Photo by Bloddrope, "Dancing the Night Away"
Outside History
These are outsiders, always. These stars—
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened
thousands of years before
our pain did; they are, they have always been
outside history.
They keep their distance. Under them remains
a place where you found
you were human, and
a landscape in which you know you are mortal.
And a time to choose between them.
I have chosen:
out of myth in history I move to be
part of that ordeal
who darkness is
only now reaching me from those fields,
those rivers, those roads clotted as
firmaments with the dead.
How slowly they die
as we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear.
And we are too late. We are always too late.
Eavan Boland
