In an autobiographical poem, "Anna Liffey," Eavan Boland writes: "In the end / It will not matter / That I was a woman. I am sure of it. / The body is a source. Nothing more. / There is a time for it. There is a certainty / about the way it seeks its own dissolution" (Boland, 204). In the end gender will not matter, for the body is merely the instrument through which meaning and identity flow. The body "seeks its own dissolution," just as the split-self seeks dissolution or death. Boland desires to close the gap. She concludes that "In the end / Everything that burdened and distinguished me / Will be lost in this: / I was a voice" (Boland, 205).