Heaney, Seamus Collected Poems (1999)

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(2)

DEATH OF A NATURALIST

THE HAW LANTERN

DOOR INTO THE DARK

NEW SELECTED POEMS 1966-1987

WINTERING OUT

THE SPIRIT LEVEL

COLLECTED POEMS OF SEAMUS HEANEY

SWEENEY'S FLIGHT (1992)

NORTH (1992)

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Collected Poems of Seamus Heaney

Door into the Dark (1972)

Wintering Out (1972)

Station Island (1984)

The Haw Lantern (1987)

New Selected Poems 1966-1987 (1990)

Death of a Naturalist (1991)

Sweeney's Flight (1992)

North (1992)

The Spirit Level (1996)

Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (1998)

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Heaney, Seamus: Death of a Naturalist (1991) , Faber and Faber

Bibliographic details

Bibliographic details for the Electronic File

Heaney, Seamus: Death of a Naturalist (1991) Cambridge 1999

Chadwyck-Healey (a Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company) The Faber Poetry Library / Twentieth-Century English Poetry

Bibliographic details for the Source Text

Heaney, Seamus

Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber form) (1939-) Death of a Naturalist

London

Faber and Faber 1991 (14), 44 p.

Preliminaries and introductory matter omitted

? Copyright Seamus Heaney, 1991, reproduced under licence from Faber and Faber Ltd ISBN 0571090249

Volume

[Page 1]

Heaney, Seamus:Digging (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Between my finger and my thumb 2 The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

3 Under my window, a clean rasping sound 4 When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: 5 My father, digging. I look down

(5)

10 The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft 11 Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

12 He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep 13 To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

14 Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

15 By God, the old man could handle a spade. 16 Just like his old man.

17 My grandfather cut more turf in a day 18 Than any other man on Toner's bog. 19 Once I carried him milk in a bottle

20 Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up 21 To drink it, then fell to right away

[Page 2]

22 Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods 23 Over his shoulder, going down and down 24 For the good turf. Digging.

25 The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap 26 Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

27 Through living roots awaken in my head. 28 But I've no spade to follow men like them.

29 Between my finger and my thumb 30 The squat pen rests.

31 I'll dig with it.

? Copyright Seamus Heaney, 1966, reproduced under licence from Faber and Faber Ltd

[Page 3]

Heaney, Seamus:Death of a Naturalist (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 All year the flax-dam festered in the heart 2 Of the townland; green and heavy headed

3 Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. 4 Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.

5 Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles

(6)

8 But best of all was the warm thick slobber 9 Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water 10 In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring, 11 I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied

12 Specks to range on window-sills at home, 13 On shelves at school, and wait and watch until 14 The fattening dots burst into nimble-

15 Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how 16 The daddy frog was called a bullfrog,

17 And how he croaked, and how the mammy frog 18 Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was

19 Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too 20 For they were yellow in the sun and brown

21 In rain.

22 Then one hot day when fields were rank 23 With cowdung in the grass, the angry frogs 24 Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges 25 To a coarse croaking that I had not heard 26 Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.

27 Right down the dam, gross-bellied frogs were cocked

[Page 4]

28 On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: 29 The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat

30 Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. 31 I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings 32 Were gathered there for vengeance, and I knew 33 That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

[Page 5]

Heaney, Seamus:The Barn (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Threshed corn lay piled like grit of ivory 2 Or solid as cement in two-lugged sacks. 3 The musty dark hoarded an armoury

4 Of farmyard implements, harness, plough-socks.

(7)

6 There were no windows, just two narrow shafts 7 Of gilded motes, crossing, from air-holes slit

8 High in each gable. The one door meant no draughts

9 All summer when the zinc burned like an oven.

10 A scythe's edge, a clean spade, a pitch-fork's prongs: 11 Slowly bright objects formed when you went in. 12 Then you felt cobwebs clogging up your lungs

13 And scuttled fast into the sunlit yard--- 14 And into nights when bats were on the wing

15 Over the rafters of sleep, where bright eyes stared 16 From piles of grain in corners, fierce, unblinking.

17 The dark gulfed like a roof-space. I was chaff

18 To be pecked up when birds shot through the air-slits. 19 I lay face-down to shun the fear above.

20 The two-lugged sacks moved in like great blind rats.

[Page 6]

Heaney, Seamus:An Advancement of Learning (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 I took the embankment path 2 (As always, deferring

3 The bridge). The river nosed past, 4 Pliable, oil-skinned, wearing

5 A transfer of gables and sky. 6 Hunched over the railing,

7 Well away from the road now, I 8 Considered the dirty-keeled swans.

9 Something slobbered curtly, close, 10 Smudging the silence: a rat

11 Slimed out of the water and

12 My throat sickened so quickly that

(8)

16 Arcs on the stones. Incredibly then

17 I established a dreaded 18 Bridgehead. I turned to stare 19 With deliberate, thrilled care 20 At my hitherto snubbed rodent.

21 He clockworked aimlessly a while, 22 Stopped, back bunched and glistening, 23 Ears plastered down on his knobbled skull, 24 Insidiously listening.

[Page 7]

25 The tapered tail that followed him, 26 The raindrop eye, the old snout: 27 One by one I took all in.

28 He trained on me. I stared him out

29 Forgetting how I used to panic

30 When his grey brothers scraped and fed 31 Behind the hen-coop in our yard,

32 On ceiling boards above my bed.

33 This terror, cold, wet-furred, small-clawed, 34 Retreated up a pipe for sewage.

35 I stared a minute after him.

36 Then I walked on and crossed the bridge.

[Page 8]

Heaney, Seamus:Blackberry-Picking (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

For Philip Hobsbaum

1 Late August, given heavy rain and sun

2 For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. 3 At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

(9)

7 Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

8 Picking. Then red ones inked up, and that hunger 9 Sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots

10 Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. 11 Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills,

12 We trekked and picked until the cans were full, 13 Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

14 With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned 15 Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered 16 With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

17 We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. 18 But when the bath was filled we found a fur, 19 A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. 20 The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush,

21 The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. 22 I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

23 That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

24 Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

[Page 9]

Heaney, Seamus:Churning Day (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 A thick crust, coarse-grained as limestone rough-cast, 2 hardened gradually on top of the four crocks

3 that stood, large pottery bombs, in the small pantry. 4 After the hot brewery of gland, cud and udder, 5 cool porous earthenware fermented the buttermilk 6 for churning day, when the hooped churn was scoured 7 with plumping kettles and the busy scrubber

8 echoed daintily on the seasoned wood.

9 It stood then, purified, on the flagged kitchen floor.

10 Out came the four crocks, spilled their heavy lip 11 of cream, their white insides, into the sterile churn. 12 The staff, like a great whisky muddler fashioned 13 in deal wood, was plunged in, the lid fitted. 14 My mother took first turn, set up rhythms

(10)

17 with flabby milk.

18 Where finally gold flecks

19 began to dance. They poured hot water then, 20 sterilized a birchwood-bowl

21 and little corrugated butter-spades. 22 Their short stroke quickened, suddenly

23 a yellow curd was weighting the churned up white, 24 heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight

25 that they fished, dripping, in a wide tin strainer, 26 heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl.

[Page 10]

27 The house would stink long after churning day, 28 acrid as a sulphur mine. The empty crocks 29 were ranged along the wall again, the butter 30 in soft printed slabs was piled on pantry shelves. 31 And in the house we moved with gravid ease, 32 our brains turned crystals full of clean deal churns, 33 the plash and gurgle of the sour-breathed milk, 34 the pat and slap of small spades on wet lumps.

[Page 11]

Heaney, Seamus:The Early Purges (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 I was six when I first saw kittens drown.

2 Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits', 3 Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

4 Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din 5 Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout 6 Of the pump and the water pumped in.

7 'Sure isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.

8 Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced 9 Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

10 Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung

(11)

13 Until I forgot them. But the fear came back

14 When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows 15 Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.

16 Still, living displaces false sentiments

17 And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown, 18 I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:

19 'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town 20 Where they consider death unnatural,

21 But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.

[Page 12]

Heaney, Seamus:Follower (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 My father worked with a horse-plough, 2 His shoulders globed like a full sail strung 3 Between the shafts and the furrow.

4 The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

5 An expert. He would set the wing 6 And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. 7 The sod rolled over without breaking. 8 At the headrig, with a single pluck

9 Of reins, the sweating team turned round 10 And back into the land. His eye

11 Narrowed and angled at the ground, 12 Mapping the furrow exactly.

13 I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake, 14 Fell sometimes on the polished sod; 15 Sometimes he rode me on his back, 16 Dipping and rising to his plod.

17 I wanted to grow up and plough, 18 To close one eye, stiffen my arm. 19 All I ever did was follow

20 In his broad shadow round the farm.

(12)

22 Yapping always. But today

23 It is my father who keeps stumbling 24 Behind me, and will not go away.

[Page 13]

Heaney, Seamus:Ancestral Photograph (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Jaws puff round and solid as a turnip, 2 Dead eyes are statue's and the upper lip 3 Bullies the heavy mouth down to a droop. 4 A bowler suggests the stage Irishman

5 Whose look has two parts scorn, two parts dead pan. 6 His silver watch chain girds him like a hoop.

7 My father's uncle, from whom he learnt the trade, 8 Long fixed in sepia tints, begins to fade

9 And must come down. Now on the bedroom wall 10 There is a faded patch where he has been--- 11 As if a bandage had been ripped from skin--- 12 Empty plaque to a house's rise and fall.

13 Twenty years ago I herded cattle 14 Into pens or held them against a wall 15 Until my father won at arguing

16 His own price on a crowd of cattlemen

17 Who handled rumps, groped teats, stood, paused and then 18 Bought a round of drinks to clinch the bargain.

19 Uncle and nephew, fifty years ago,

20 Heckled and herded through the fair days too. 21 This barrel of a man penned in the frame: 22 I see him with the jaunty hat pushed back

23 Draw thumbs out of his waistcoat, curtly smack 24 Hands and sell. Father, I've watched you do the same

[Page 14]

25 And watched you sadden when the fairs were stopped. 26 No room for dealers if the farmers shopped

(13)

28 Was parked behind the door and stands there still. 29 Closing this chapter of our chronicle,

30 I take your uncle's portrait to the attic.

[Page 15]

Heaney, Seamus:Mid-Term Break (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 I sat all morning in the college sick bay, 2 Counting bells knelling classes to a close. 3 At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

4 In the porch I met my father crying---

5 He had always taken funerals in his stride--- 6 And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

7 The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram 8 When I came in, and I was embarrassed

9 By old men standing up to shake my hand

10 And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'. 11 Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, 12 Away at school, as my mother held my hand

13 In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. 14 At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

15 With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

16 Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops 17 And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

18 For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

19 Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, 20 He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

21 No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

22 A four foot box, a foot for every year.

(14)

Heaney, Seamus:Dawn Shoot (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Clouds ran their wet mortar, plastered the daybreak 2 Grey. The stones clicked tartly

3 If we missed the sleepers, but mostly 4 Silent we headed up the railway

5 Where now the only steam was funnelling from cows 6 Ditched on their rumps beyond hedges,

7 Cudding, watching, and knowing.

8 The rails scored a bull's-eye into the eye 9 Of a bridge. A corncrake challenged 10 Unexpectedly like a hoarse sentry

11 And a snipe rocketed away on reconnaissance. 12 Rubber-booted, belted, tense as two parachutists, 13 We climbed the iron gate and dropped

14 Into the meadow's six acres of broom, gorse and dew.

15 A sandy bank, reinforced with coiling roots, 16 Faced you, two hundred yards from the track. 17 Snug on our bellies behind a rise of dead whins, 18 Our ravenous eyes getting used to the greyness, 19 We settled, soon had the holes under cover.

20 This was the den they all would be heading for now, 21 Loping under ferns in dry drains, flashing

22 Brown orbits across ploughlands and grazing.

23 The plaster thinned at the skyline, the whitewash 24 Was bleaching on houses and stables,

25 The cock would be sounding reveille

[Page 17]

26 In seconds.

27 And there was one breaking 28 In from the gap in the corner.

29 Donnelly's left hand came up

30 And came down on my barrel. This one was his,

31 'For Christ's sake,' I spat, 'Take your time, there'll be more.' 32 There was the playboy trotting up to the hole

(15)

36 Another snipe catapulted into the light, 37 A mare whinnied and shivered her haunches 38 Up on a hill. The others would not be back 39 After three shots like that. We dandered off

40 To the railway; the prices were small at that time 41 So we did not bother to cut out the tongue.

42 The ones that slipped back when the all clear got round 43 Would be first to examine him.

[Page 18]

Heaney, Seamus:At a Potato Digging (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

I

1 A mechanical digger wrecks the drill, 2 Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould. 3 Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill 4 Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold.

5 Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch 6 A higgledy line from hedge to headland;

7 Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch 8 A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand

9 Tall for a moment but soon stumble back 10 To fish a new load from the crumbled surf.

11 Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black 12 Mother. Processional stooping through the turf

13 Recurs mindlessly as autumn. Centuries 14 Of fear and homage to the famine god

15 Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees, 16 Make a seasonal altar of the sod.

II

1 Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered 2 like inflated pebbles. Native

(16)

[Page 19]

4 where the halved seed shot and clotted, 5 these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem 6 the petrified hearts of drills. Split

7 by the spade, they show white as cream.

8 Good smells exude from crumbled earth. 9 The rough bark of humus erupts

10 knots of potatoes (a clean birth) 11 whose solid feel, whose wet insides 12 promise taste of ground and root.

13 To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed.

III

1 Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on 2 wild higgledy skeletons,

3 scoured the land in 'forty-five, 4 wolfed the blighted root and died.

5 The new potato, sound as stone, 6 putrefied when it had lain

7 three days in the long clay pit. 8 Millions rotted along with it.

9 Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard, 10 faces chilled to a plucked bird. 11 In a million wicker huts,

12 beaks of famine snipped at guts.

13 A people hungering from birth, 14 grubbing, like plants, in the earth,

[Page 20]

15 were grafted with a great sorrow. 16 Hope rotted like a marrow.

(17)

IV

1 Under a gay flotilla of gulls

2 The rhythm deadens, the workers stop. 3 Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls 4 Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop

5 Down in the ditch and take their fill, 6 Thankfully breaking timeless fasts;

7 Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill 8 Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.

[Page 21]

Heaney, Seamus:For the Commander of the Eliza (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

... the others, with emaciated faces and prominent, staring eyeballs, were evidently in an advanced state of starvation. The officer reported to Sir James Dombrain ... and Sir James, 'very inconveniently', wrote Routh, 'interfered'.

CECIL WOODHAM-SMITH: THE GREAT HUNGER

1 Routine patrol off West Mayo; sighting 2 A rowboat heading unusually far

3 Beyond the creek, I tacked and hailed the crew 4 In Gaelic. Their stroke had clearly weakened 5 As they pulled to, from guilt or bashfulness 6 I was conjecturing when, O my sweet Christ, 7 We saw piled in the bottom of their craft 8 Six grown men with gaping mouths and eyes 9 Bursting the sockets like spring onions in drills. 10 Six wrecks of bone and pallid, tautened skin. 11 'Bia, bia,

12 Bia'. In whines and snarls their desperation 13 Rose and fell like a flock of starving gulls. 14 We'd known about the shortage, but on board 15 They always kept us right with flour and beef 16 So understand my feelings, and the men's, 17 Who had no mandate to relieve distress

18 Since relief was then available in Westport---

(18)

20 I had to refuse food: they cursed and howled

21 Like dogs that had been kicked hard in the privates. 22 When they drove at me with their starboard oar 23 (Risking capsize themselves) I saw they were 24 Violent and without hope. I hoisted

25 And cleared off. Less incidents the better.

[Page 22]

26 Next day, like six bad smells, those living skulls 27 Drifted through the dark of bunks and hatches 28 And once in port I exorcised my ship,

29 Reporting all to the Inspector General. 30 Sir James, I understand, urged free relief 31 For famine victims in the Westport Sector

32 And earned tart reprimand from good Whitehall. 33 Let natives prosper by their own exertions; 34 Who could not swim might go ahead and sink. 35 'The Coast Guard with their zeal and activity 36 Are too lavish' were the words, I think.

[Page 23]

Heaney, Seamus:The Diviner (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick 2 That he held tight by the arms of the V:

3 Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck 4 Of water, nervous, but professionally

5 Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting. 6 The rod jerked with precise convulsions, 7 Spring water suddenly broadcasting 8 Through a green hazel its secret stations.

9 The bystanders would ask to have a try. 10 He handed them the rod without a word. 11 It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly, 12 He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred.

(19)

[Page 24]

Heaney, Seamus:Turkeys Observed (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 One observes them, one expects them; 2 Blue-breasted in their indifferent mortuary, 3 Beached bare on the cold marble slabs 4 In immodest underwear frills of feather.

5 The red sides of beef retain

6 Some of the smelly majesty of living: 7 A half-cow slung from a hook maintains 8 That blood and flesh are not ignored.

9 But a turkey cowers in death.

10 Pull his neck, pluck him, and look--- 11 He is just another poor forked thing, 12 A skin bag plumped with inky putty.

13 He once complained extravagantly 14 In an overture of gobbles;

15 He lorded it on the claw-flecked mud 16 With a grey flick of his Confucian eye.

17 Now, as I pass the bleak Christmas dazzle, 18 I find him ranged with his cold squadrons: 19 The fuselage is bare, the proud wings snapped, 20 The tail-fan stripped down to a shameful rudder.

[Page 25]

Heaney, Seamus:Cow in Calf (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 It seems she has swallowed a barrel. 2 From forelegs to haunches,

3 her belly is slung like a hammock.

4 Slapping her out of the byre is like slapping 5 a great bag of seed. My hand

(20)

8 heard the blows plump like a depth-charge 9 far in her gut.

10 The udder grows. Windbags 11 of bagpipes are crammed there 12 to drone in her lowing.

13 Her cud and her milk, her heats and her calves 14 keep coming and going.

[Page 26]

Heaney, Seamus:Trout (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Hangs, a fat gun-barrel, 2 deep under arched bridges 3 or slips like butter down 4 the throat of the river.

5 From depths smooth-skinned as plums, 6 his muzzle gets bull's eye;

7 picks off grass-seed and moths 8 that vanish, torpedoed.

9 Where water unravels 10 over gravel-beds he

11 is fired from the shallows, 12 white belly reporting

13 flat; darts like a tracer- 14 bullet back between stones 15 and is never burnt out. 16 A volley of cold blood

17 ramrodding the current.

[Page 27]

(21)

1 The burn drowns steadily in its own downpour, 2 A helter-skelter of muslin and glass

3 That skids to a halt, crashing up suds.

4 Simultaneous acceleration

5 And sudden braking; water goes over 6 Like villains dropped screaming to justice.

7 It appears an athletic glacier

8 Has reared into reverse: is swallowed up 9 And regurgitated through this long throat.

10 My eye rides over and downwards, falls with 11 Hurtling tons that slabber and spill,

12 Falls, yet records the tumult thus standing still.

[Page 28]

Heaney, Seamus:Docker (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 There, in the corner, staring at his drink. 2 The cap juts like a gantry's crossbeam,

3 Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw. 4 Speech is clamped in the lips' vice.

5 That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic--- 6 Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again. 7 The only Roman collar he tolerates

8 Smiles all round his sleek pint of porter.

9 Mosaic imperatives bang home like rivets; 10 God is a foreman with certain definite views 11 Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure. 12 A factory horn will blare the Resurrection.

13 He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, 14 Clearly used to silence and an armchair: 15 Tonight the wife and children will be quiet 16 At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.

(22)

[Page 29]

Heaney, Seamus:Poor Women in a City Church (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 The small wax candles melt to light, 2 Flicker in marble, reflect bright 3 Asterisks on brass candlesticks: 4 At the Virgin's altar on the right, 5 Blue flames are jerking on wicks.

6 Old dough-faced women with black shawls 7 Drawn down tight kneel in the stalls.

8 Cold yellow candle-tongues, blue flame 9 Mince and caper as whispered calls 10 Take wing up to the Holy Name.

11 Thus each day in the sacred place 12 They kneel. Golden shrines, altar lace, 13 Marble columns and cool shadows 14 Still them. In the gloom you cannot trace 15 A wrinkle on their beeswax brows.

[Page 30]

Heaney, Seamus:Gravities (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 High-riding kites appear to range quite freely, 2 Though reined by strings, strict and invisible. 3 The pigeon that deserts you suddenly

4 Is heading home, instinctively faithful.

5 Lovers with barrages of hot insult

6 Often cut off their nose to spite their face, 7 Endure a hopeless day, declare their guilt, 8 Re-enter the native port of their embrace.

9 Blinding in Paris, for his party-piece

10 Joyce named the shops along O'Connell Street 11 And on Iona Colmcille sought ease

(23)

[Page 31]

Heaney, Seamus:Twice Shy (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Her scarf à la Bardot, 2 In suede flats for the walk, 3 She came with me one evening 4 For air and friendly talk.

5 We crossed the quiet river, 6 Took the embankment walk.

7 Traffic holding its breath, 8 Sky a tense diaphragm: 9 Dusk hung like a backcloth

10 That shook where a swan swam, 11 Tremulous as a hawk

12 Hanging deadly, calm.

13 A vacuum of need

14 Collapsed each hunting heart 15 But tremulously we held 16 As hawk and prey apart, 17 Preserved classic decorum, 18 Deployed our talk with art.

19 Our juvenilia

20 Had taught us both to wait, 21 Not to publish feeling 22 And regret it all too late--- 23 Mushroom loves already 24 Had puffed and burst in hate.

[Page 32]

25 So, chary and excited

26 As a thrush linked on a hawk, 27 We thrilled to the March twilight 28 With nervous childish talk:

(24)

[Page 33]

Heaney, Seamus:Valediction (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Lady with the frilled blouse 2 And simple tartan skirt, 3 Since you left the house 4 Its emptiness has hurt

5 All thought. In your presence 6 Time rode easy, anchored 7 On a smile; but absence

8 Rocked love's balance, unmoored 9 The days. They buck and bound 10 Across the calendar,

11 Pitched from the quiet sound 12 Of your flower-tender

13 Voice. Need breaks on my strand; 14 You've gone, I am at sea.

15 Until you resume command, 16 Self is in mutiny.

[Page 34]

Heaney, Seamus:Lovers on Aran (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass, 2 Came dazzling around, into the rocks,

3 Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

4 To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush

5 To throw wide arms of rock around a tide 6 That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

7 Did sea define the land or land the sea?

8 Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision. 9 Sea broke on land to full identity.

(25)

Heaney, Seamus:Poem (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

For Marie

1 Love, I shall perfect for you the child 2 Who diligently potters in my brain

3 Digging with heavy spade till sods were piled 4 Or puddling through muck in a deep drain.

5 Yearly I would sow my yard-long garden. 6 I'd strip a layer of sods to build the wall 7 That was to exclude sow and pecking hen. 8 Yearly, admitting these, the sods would fall.

9 Or in the sucking clabber I would splash 10 Delightedly and dam the flowing drain, 11 But always my bastions of clay and mush 12 Would burst before the rising autumn rain.

13 Love, you shall perfect for me this child

14 Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking: 15 Within new limits now, arrange the world

16 Within our walls, within our golden ring.

[Page 36]

Heaney, Seamus:Honeymoon Flight (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Below, the patchwork earth, dark hems of hedge, 2 The long grey tapes of road that bind and loose 3 Villages and fields in casual marriage:

4 We bank above the small lough and farmhouse

5 And the sure green world goes topsy-turvy 6 As we climb out of our familiar landscape. 7 The engine noises change. You look at me. 8 The coastline slips away beneath the wing-tip.

9 And launched right off the earth by force of fire, 10 We hang, miraculous, above the water,

(26)

12 To keep us airborne and to bring us further.

13 Ahead of us the sky's a geyser now.

14 A calm voice talks of cloud yet we feel lost. 15 Air-pockets jolt our fears and down we go. 16 Travellers, at this point, can only trust.

[Page 37]

Heaney, Seamus:Scaffolding (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Masons, when they start upon a building, 2 Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

3 Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points, 4 Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

5 And yet all this comes down when the job's done, 6 Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

7 So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be 8 Old bridges breaking between you and me,

9 Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall, 10 Confident that we have built our wall.

[Page 38]

Heaney, Seamus:Storm on the Island (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 We are prepared: we build our houses squat, 2 Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate. 3 This wizened earth has never troubled us

4 With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks 5 Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees 6 Which might prove company when it blows full 7 Blast: you know what I mean---leaves and branches 8 Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale

(27)

11 But there are no trees, no natural shelter. 12 You might think that the sea is company, 13 Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs, 14 But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits 15 The very windows, spits like a tame cat

16 Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives 17 And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,

18 We are bombarded by the empty air. 19 Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

[Page 39]

Heaney, Seamus:Synge on Aran (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Salt off the sea whets 2 the blades of four winds. 3 They peel acres

4 of locked rock, pare down 5 a rind of shrivelled ground; 6 bull-noses are chiselled 7 on cliffs.

8 Islanders too

9 are for sculpting. Note

10 the pointed scowl, the mouth 11 carved as upturned anchor 12 and the polished head 13 full of drownings. 14 There

15 he comes now, a hard pen 16 scraping in his head;

17 the nib filed on a salt wind 18 and dipped in the keening sea.

[Page 40]

Heaney, Seamus:Saint Francis and the Birds (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

(28)

2 They listened, fluttered, throttled up 3 Into the blue like a flock of words

4 Released for fun from his holy lips.

5 Then wheeled back, whirred about his head, 6 Pirouetted on brothers' capes,

7 Danced on the wing, for sheer joy played 8 And sang, like images took flight.

9 Which was the best poem Francis made,

10 His argument true, his tone light.

[Page 41]

Heaney, Seamus:In Small Townlands (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

For Colin Middleton

1 In small townlands his hogshair wedge 2 Will split the granite from the clay 3 Till crystal in the rock is bared: 4 Loaded brushes hone an edge

5 On mountain blue and heather grey. 6 Outcrops of stone contract, outstared.

7 The spectrum bursts, a bright grenade, 8 When he unlocks the safety catch 9 On morning dew, on cloud, on rain. 10 The splintered lights slice like a spade 11 That strips the land of fuzz and blotch, 12 Pares clean as bone, cruel as the pain

13 That strikes in a wild heart attack. 14 His eyes, thick, greedy lenses, fire

15 This bare bald earth with white and red, 16 Incinerate it till it's black

17 And brilliant as a funeral pyre: 18 A new world cools out of his head.

(29)

[Page 42]

Heaney, Seamus:The Folk Singers (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Re-turning time-turned words, 2 Fitting each weathered song 3 To a new-grooved harmony,

4 They pluck slick strings and swing 5 A sad heart's equilibrium.

6 Numb passion, pearled in the shy 7 Shell of a country love

8 And strung on a frail tune,

9 Looks sharp now, strikes a pose

10 Like any rustic new to the bright town.

11 Their pre-packed tale will sell 12 Ten thousand times: pale love 13 Rouged for the streets. Humming

14 Solders all broken hearts. Death's edge 15 Blunts on the narcotic strumming.

[Page 43]

Heaney, Seamus:The Play Way (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

1 Sunlight pillars through glass, probes each desk 2 For milk-tops, drinking straws and old dry crusts. 3 The music strides to challenge it,

4 Mixing memory and desire with chalk dust.

5 My lesson notes read: Teacher will play 6 Beethoven's Concerto Number Five 7 And class will express themselves freely 8 In writing. One said 'Can we jive?'

(30)

13 Working its private spell behind eyes 14 That stare wide. They have forgotten me

15 For once. The pens are busy, the tongues mime 16 Their blundering embrace of the free

17 Word. A silence charged with sweetness 18 Breaks short on lost faces where I see

19 New looks. Then notes stretch taut as snares. They trip 20 To fall into themselves unknowingly.

[Page 44]

Heaney, Seamus:Personal Helicon (1966) [from Death of a Naturalist (1991), Faber and Faber]

For Michael Longley

1 As a child, they could not keep me from wells 2 And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. 3 I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells 4 Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

5 One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. 6 I savoured the rich crash when a bucket 7 Plummeted down at the end of a rope. 8 So deep you saw no reflection in it.

9 A shallow one under a dry stone ditch 10 Fructified like any aquarium.

11 When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch, 12 A white face hovered over the bottom.

13 Others had echoes, gave back your own call 14 With a clean new music in it. And one

15 Was scaresome for there, out of ferns and tall 16 Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

17 Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,

18 To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring 19 Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme

20 To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

(31)

(32)

Heaney, Seamus: The Haw Lantern (1987) , Faber and Faber

Bibliographic details

Bibliographic details for the Electronic File

Heaney, Seamus: The Haw Lantern (1987) Cambridge 1999

Chadwyck-Healey (a Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company) The Faber Poetry Library / Twentieth-Century English Poetry

Bibliographic details for the Source Text

Heaney, Seamus

Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber form) (1939-) The Haw Lantern

London

Faber and Faber 1987 (11), 51 p.

Preliminaries and introductory matter omitted

? Copyright Seamus Heaney, 1987, reproduced under licence from Faber and Faber Ltd ISBN 057114781X

Volume

[Page 1]

Heaney, Seamus:Alphabets [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

I

1 A shadow his father makes with joined hands 2 And thumbs and fingers nibbles on the wall 3 Like a rabbit's head. He understands

4 He will understand more when he goes to school.

5 There he draws smoke with chalk the whole first week, 6 Then draws the forked stick that they call a Y.

(33)

9 Two rafters and a cross-tie on the slate 10 Are the letter some call ah, some call ay.

11 There are charts, there are headlines, there is a right 12 Way to hold the pen and a wrong way.

13 First it is 'copying out', and then 'English' 14 Marked correct with a little leaning hoe. 15 Smells of inkwells rise in the classroom hush. 16 A globe in the window tilts like a coloured O.

II

1 Declensions sang on air like a hosanna 2 As, column after stratified column, 3 Book One of Elementa Latina,

4 Marbled and minatory, rose up in him.

[Page 2]

5 For he was fostered next in a stricter school 6 Named for the patron saint of the oak wood 7 Where classes switched to the pealing of a bell 8 And he left the Latin forum for the shade

9 Of new calligraphy that felt like home. 10 The letters of this alphabet were trees. 11 The capitals were orchards in full bloom, 12 The lines of script like briars coiled in ditches.

13 Here in her snooded garment and bare feet, 14 All ringleted in assonance and woodnotes, 15 The poet's dream stole over him like sunlight 16 And passed into the tenebrous thickets.

17 He learns this other writing. He is the scribe 18 Who drove a team of quills on his white field. 19 Round his cell door the blackbirds dart and dab. 20 Then self-denial, fasting, the pure cold.

21 By rules that hardened the farther they reached north 22 He bends to his desk and begins again.

(34)

III

1 The globe has spun. He stands in a wooden O. 2 He alludes to Shakespeare. He alludes to Graves. 3 Time has bulldozed the school and school window. 4 Balers drop bales like printouts where stooked sheaves

[Page 3]

5 Made lambdas on the stubble once at harvest 6 And the delta face of each potato pit

7 Was patted straight and moulded against frost. 8 All gone, with the omega that kept

9 Watch above each door, the good luck horse-shoe. 10 Yet shape-note language, absolute on air

11 As Constantine's sky-lettered IN HOC SIGNO 12 Can still command him; or the necromancer

13 Who would hang from the domed ceiling of his house 14 A figure of the world with colours in it

15 So that the figure of the universe

16 And 'not just single things' would meet his sight

17 When he walked abroad. As from his small window 18 The astronaut sees all he has sprung from,

19 The risen, aqueous, singular, lucent O 20 Like a magnified and buoyant

ovum---21 Or like my own wide pre-reflective stare 22 All agog at the plasterer on his ladder

23 Skimming our gable and writing our name there 24 With his trowel point, letter by strange letter.

[Page 4]

Heaney, Seamus:Terminus [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

(35)

1 When I hoked there, I would find 2 An acorn and a rusted bolt.

3 If I lifted my eyes, a factory chimney 4 And a dormant mountain.

5 If I listened, an engine shunting 6 And a trotting horse.

7 Is it any wonder when I thought 8 I would have second thoughts?

II

1 When they spoke of the prudent squirrel's hoard 2 It shone like gifts at a nativity.

3 When they spoke of the mammon of iniquity 4 The coins in my pockets reddened like stove-lids.

5 I was the march drain and the march drain's banks 6 Suffering the limit of each claim.

[Page 5]

III

1 Two buckets were easier carried than one. 2 I grew up in between.

3 My left hand placed the standard iron weight. 4 My right tilted a last grain in the balance.

5 Baronies, parishes met where I was born. 6 When I stood on the central stepping stone

7 I was the last earl on horseback in midstream 8 Still parleying, in earshot of his peers.

(36)

Heaney, Seamus:From the Frontier of Writing [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 The tightness and the nilness round that space 2 when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect 3 its make and number and, as one bends his face

4 towards your window, you catch sight of more 5 on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent

6 down cradled guns that hold you under cover

7 and everything is pure interrogation 8 until a rifle motions and you move

9 with guarded unconcerned

acceleration---10 a little emptier, a little spent

11 as always by that quiver in the self, 12 subjugated, yes, and obedient.

13 So you drive on to the frontier of writing 14 where it happens again. The guns on tripods; 15 the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

16 data about you, waiting for the squawk 17 of clearance; the marksman training down 18 out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

19 And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed, 20 as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall

21 on the black current of a tarmac road

22 past armour-plated vehicles, out between 23 the posted soldiers flowing and receding

24 like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

[Page 7]

Heaney, Seamus:The Haw Lantern [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 The wintry haw is burning out of season,

(37)

4 the wick of self-respect from dying out, 5 not having to blind them with illumination.

6 But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost 7 it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes

8 with his lantern, seeking one just man;

9 so you end up scrutinized from behind the haw 10 he holds up at eye-level on its twig,

11 and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,

12 its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you, 13 its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on.

[Page 8]

Heaney, Seamus:The Stone Grinder [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 Penelope worked with some guarantee of a plot. 2 Whatever she unweaved at night

3 might advance it all by a day.

4 Me, I ground the same stones for fifty years 5 and what I undid was never the thing I had done. 6 I was unrewarded as darkness at a mirror.

7 I prepared my surface to survive what came over it--- 8 cartographers, printmakers, all that lining and inking. 9 I ordained opacities and they haruspicated.

10 For them it was a new start and a clean slate 11 every time. For me, it was coming full circle 12 like the ripple perfected in stillness.

13 So. To commemorate me. Imagine the faces 14 stripped off the face of a quarry. Practise 15 coitus interruptus on a pile of old lithographs.

[Page 9]

(38)

for Norman MacCaig

1 On the day he was to take the poison

2 Socrates told his friends he had been writing: 3 putting Aesop's fables into verse.

4 And this was not because Socrates loved wisdom 5 and advocated the examined life.

6 The reason was that he had had a dream.

7 Caesar, now, or Herod or Constantine 8 or any number of Shakespearean kings 9 bursting at the end like dams

10 where original panoramas lie submerged

11 which have to rise again before the death scenes--- 12 you can believe in their believing dreams.

13 But hardly Socrates. Until, that is,

14 he tells his friends the dream had kept recurring 15 all his life, repeating one instruction:

16 Practise the art, which art until that moment 17 he always took to mean philosophy.

18 Happy the man, therefore, with a natural gift

19 for practising the right one from the start---

20 poetry, say, or fishing; whose nights are dreamless; 21 whose deep-sunk panoramas rise and pass

22 like daylight through the rod's eye or the nib's eye.

[Page 10]

Heaney, Seamus:Parable Island [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

I

(39)

3 they yield to nobody in their belief 4 that the country is an island.

5 Somewhere in the far north, in a region 6 every native thinks of as 'the coast',

7 there lies the mountain of the shifting names.

8 The occupiers call it Cape Basalt.

9 The Sun's Headstone, say farmers in the east. 10 Drunken westerners call it The Orphan's Tit.

11 To find out where he stands the traveller 12 has to keep listening---since there is no map

13 which draws the line he knows he must have crossed.

14 Meanwhile, the forked-tongued natives keep repeating 15 prophecies they pretend not to believe

16 about a point where all the names converge 17 underneath the mountain and where (some day) 18 they are going to start to mine the ore of truth.

II

1 In the beginning there was one bell-tower 2 which struck its single note each day at noon 3 in honour of the one-eyed all-creator.

[Page 11]

4 At least, this was the original idea 5 missionary scribes record they found 6 in autochthonous tradition. But even there

7 you can't be sure that parable is not 8 at work already retrospectively,

9 since all their early manuscripts are full

10 of stylized eye-shapes and recurrent glosses 11 in which those old revisionists derive

12 the word island from roots in eye and land.

(40)

1 Now archaeologists begin to gloss the glosses. 2 To one school, the stone circles are pure symbol; 3 to another, assembly spots or hut foundations.

4 One school thinks a post-hole in an ancient floor 5 stands first of all for a pupil in an iris.

6 The other thinks a post-hole is a post-hole. And so

on---7 like the subversives and collaborators 8 always vying with a fierce possessiveness 9 for the right to set 'the island story' straight.

IV

1 The elders dream of boat-journeys and havens

2 and have their stories too, like the one about the man 3 who took to his bed, it seems, and died convinced

4 that the cutting of the Panama Canal

5 would mean the ocean would all drain away 6 and the island disappear by aggrandizement.

[Page 12]

Heaney, Seamus:From the Republic of Conscience [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

I

1 When I landed in the republic of conscience 2 it was so noiseless when the engines stopped 3 I could hear a curlew high above the runway.

4 At immigration, the clerk was an old man

5 who produced a wallet from his homespun coat 6 and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.

(41)

10 No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.

11 You carried your own burden and very soon 12 your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.

II

1 Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning 2 spells universal good and parents hang

3 swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.

4 Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells 5 are held to the ear during births and funerals. 6 The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.

7 Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat. 8 The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen, 9 The hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.

[Page 13]

10 At their inauguration, public leaders

11 must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep 12 to atone for their presumption to hold

office---13 and to affirm their faith that all life sprang 14 from salt in tears which the sky-god wept 15 after he dreamt his solitude was endless.

III

1 I came back from that frugal republic

2 with my two arms the one length, the customs woman 3 having insisted my allowance was myself.

4 The old man rose and gazed into my face 5 and said that was official recognition 6 that I was now a dual citizen.

7 He therefore desired me when I got home 8 to consider myself a representative

(42)

10 Their embassies, he said, were everywhere 11 but operated independently

12 and no ambassador would ever be relieved.

[Page 14]

Heaney, Seamus:Hailstones [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

I

1 My cheek was hit and hit: 2 sudden hailstones

3 pelted and bounced on the road.

4 When it cleared again

5 something whipped and knowledgeable 6 had withdrawn

7 and left me there with my chances. 8 I made a small hard ball

9 of burning water running from my hand

10 just as I make this now

11 out of the melt of the real thing 12 smarting into its absence.

II

1 To be reckoned with, all the same, 2 those brats of showers.

3 The way they refused permission,

4 rattling the classroom window 5 like a ruler across the knuckles, 6 the way they were perfect first

7 and then in no time dirty slush.

(43)

[Page 15]

10 but for us, it was the sting of hailstones 11 and the unstingable hands of Eddie Diamond 12 foraging in the nettles.

III

1 Nipple and hive, bite-lumps,

2 small acorns of the almost pleasurable 3 intimated and disallowed

4 when the shower ended 5 and everything said wait. 6 For what? For forty years

7 to say there, there you had

8 the truest foretaste of your aftermath--- 9 in that dilation

10 when the light opened in silence 11 and a car with wipers going still 12 laid perfect tracks in the slush.

[Page 16]

Heaney, Seamus:Two Quick Notes [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

I

1 My old hard friend, how you sought 2 Occasions of justified anger!

3 Who could buff me like you

4 Who wanted the soul to ring true 5 And plain as a galvanized bucket 6 And would kick it to test it?

(44)

8 So of course when you turned on yourself 9 You were ferocious.

II

1 Abrupt and thornproofed and lonely. 2 A raider from the old country

3 Of night prayer and principled challenge,

4 Crashing at barriers

5 You thought ought still to be there, 6 Overshooting into thin air.

7 O upright self-wounding prie-dieu 8 In shattered free fall:

9 Hail and farewell.

[Page 17]

Heaney, Seamus:The Stone Verdict [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 When he stands in the judgment place 2 With his stick in his hand and the broad hat 3 Still on his head, maimed by self-doubt

4 And an old disdain of sweet talk and excuses, 5 It will be no justice if the sentence is blabbed out. 6 He will expect more than words in the ultimate court 7 He relied on through a lifetime's speechlessness.

8 Let it be like the judgment of Hermes,

9 God of the stone heap, where the stones were verdicts 10 Cast solidly at his feet, piling up around him

11 Until he stood waist deep in the cairn 12 Of his apotheosis: maybe a gate-pillar

13 Or a tumbled wallstead where hogweed earths the silence 14 Somebody will break at last to say, 'Here

15 His spirit lingers,' and will have said too much.

(45)

Heaney, Seamus:From the Land of the Unspoken [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 I have heard of a bar of platinum 2 kept by a logical and talkative nation 3 as their standard of measurement,

4 the throne room and the burial chamber 5 of every calculation and prediction.

6 I could feel at home inside that metal core 7 slumbering at the very hub of systems.

8 We are a dispersed people whose history 9 is a sensation of opaque fidelity.

10 When or why our exile began

11 among the speech-ridden, we cannot tell 12 but solidarity comes flooding up in us

13 when we hear their legends of infants discovered 14 floating in coracles towards destiny

15 or of kings' biers heaved and borne away

16 on the river's shoulders or out into the sea roads.

17 When we recognize our own, we fall in step 18 but do not altogether come up level.

19 My deepest contact was underground

20 strap-hanging back to back on a rush-hour train 21 and in a museum once, I inhaled

22 vernal assent from a neck and shoulder 23 pretending to be absorbed in a display 24 of absolutely silent quernstones.

[Page 19]

25 Our unspoken assumptions have the force 26 of revelation. How else could we know 27 that whoever is the first of us to seek 28 assent and votes in a rich democracy

29 will be the last of us and have killed our language? 30 Meanwhile, if we miss the sight of a fish

31 we heard jumping and then see its ripples, 32 that means one more of us is dying somewhere.

(46)

[Page 20]

Heaney, Seamus:A Ship of Death [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 Scyld was still a strong man when his time came 2 and he crossed over into Our Lord's keeping. 3 His warrior band did what he bade them 4 when he laid down the law among the Danes: 5 they shouldered him out to the sea's flood, 6 the chief they revered who had long ruled them. 7 A ring-necked prow rode in the harbour,

8 clad with ice, its cables tightening.

9 They stretched their beloved lord in the boat, 10 laid out amidships by the mast

11 the great ring-giver. Far-fetched treasures 12 were piled upon him, and precious gear.

13 I never heard before of a ship so well furbished 14 with battle-tackle, bladed weapons

15 and coats of mail. The treasure was massed 16 on top of him: it would travel far

17 on out into the sway of ocean.

18 They decked his body no less bountifully 19 with offerings than those first ones did 20 who cast him away when he was a child 21 and launched him out alone over the waves. 22 And they set a gold standard up

23 high above his head and let him drift 24 to wind and tide, bewailing him

25 and mourning their loss. No man can tell, 26 no wise man in the hall or weathered veteran 27 knows for certain who salvaged that load. Beowulf, II., 26-52

[Page 21]

Heaney, Seamus:The Spoonbait [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 So a new similitude is given us

(47)

3 Unto a spoonbait that a child discovers 4 Beneath the sliding lid of a pencil case,

5 Glimpsed once and imagined for a lifetime 6 Risen and free and spooling out of

nowhere---7 A shooting star going back up the darkness. 8 It flees him and it burns him all at once

9 Like the single drop that Dives implored 10 Falling and falling into a great gulf.

11 Then exit, the polished helmet of a hero 12 Laid out amidships above scudding water.

13 Exit, alternatively, a toy of light

14 Reeled through him upstream, snagging on nothing.

[Page 22]

Heaney, Seamus:In Memoriam: Robert Fitzgerald [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 The socket of each axehead like the squared 2 Doorway to a megalithic tomb

3 With its slabbed passage that keeps opening forward 4 To face another corbelled stone-faced door

5 That opens on a third. There is no last door,

6 Just threshold stone, stone jambs, stone crossbeam 7 Repeating enter, enter, enter, enter.

8 Lintel and upright fly past in the dark.

9 After the bowstring sang a swallow's note, 10 The arrow whose migration is its mark 11 Leaves a whispered breath in every socket.

12 The great test over, while the gut's still humming, 13 This time it travels out of all knowing

14 Perfectly aimed towards the vacant centre.

(48)

Heaney, Seamus:The Old Team [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 Dusk. Scope of air. A railed pavilion 2 Formal and blurring in the sepia 3 Of (always) summery Edwardian 4 Ulster. Which could be India

5 Or England. Or any old parade ground 6 Where a moustachioed tenantry togged out 7 To pose with folded arms, all musclebound 8 And staunch and forever up against it.

9 Moyola Park FC! Sons of Castledawson! 10 Stokers and scutchers! Grandfather McCann! 11 Team spirit, walled parkland, the linen mill 12 Have, in your absence, grown historical

13 As those lightly clapped, dull-thumping games of football. 14 The steady coffins sail past at eye-level.

[Page 24]

Heaney, Seamus:Clearances [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

in memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984

1 She taught me what her uncle once taught her: 2 How easily the biggest coal block split

3 If you got the grain and hammer angled right.

4 The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, 5 Its co-opted and obliterated echo,

6 Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen,

7 Taught me between the hammer and the block 8 To face the music. Teach me now to listen, 9 To strike it rich behind the linear black.

[Page 25]

(49)

1 A cobble thrown a hundred years ago 2 Keeps coming at me, the first stone

3 Aimed at a great-grandmother's turncoat brow. 4 The pony jerks and the riot's on.

5 She's crouched low in the trap

6 Running the gauntlet that first Sunday

7 Down the brae to Mass at a panicked gallop. 8 He whips on through the town to cries of 'Lundy!'

9 Call her 'The Convert'. 'The Exogamous Bride'. 10 Anyhow, it is a genre piece

11 Inherited on my mother's side

12 And mine to dispose with now she's gone. 13 Instead of silver and Victorian lace,

14 The exonerating, exonerated stone.

[Page 26]

2

1 Polished linoleum shone there. Brass taps shone. 2 The china cups were very white and big---

3 An unchipped set with sugar bowl and jug. 4 The kettle whistled. Sandwich and teascone 5 Were present and correct. In case it run, 6 The butter must be kept out of the sun.

7 And don't be dropping crumbs. Don't tilt your chair. 8 Don't reach. Don't point. Don't make noise when you stir.

9 It is Number 5, New Row, Land of the Dead, 10 Where grandfather is rising from his place

11 With spectacles pushed back on a clean bald head 12 To welcome a bewildered homing daughter

13 Before she even knocks. 'What's this? What's this?' 14 And they sit down in the shining room together.

[Page 27]

(50)

1 When all the others were away at Mass 2 I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. 3 They broke the silence, let fall one by one 4 Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: 5 Cold comforts set between us, things to share 6 Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

7 And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

8 From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

9 So while the parish priest at her bedside

10 Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying 11 And some were responding and some crying

12 I remembered her head bent towards my head, 13 Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--- 14 Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

[Page 28]

4

1 Fear of affectation made her affect 2 Inadequacy whenever it came to

3 Pronouncing words 'beyond her'. Bertold Brek. 4 She'd manage something hampered and askew 5 Every time, as if she might betray

6 The hampered and inadequate by too 7 Well-adjusted a vocabulary.

8 With more challenge than pride, she'd tell me, 'You 9 Know all them things.' So I governed my tongue 10 In front of her, a genuinely well-

11 adjusted adequate betrayal

12 Of what I knew better. I'd naw and aye 13 And decently relapse into the wrong 14 Grammar which kept us allied and at bay.

[Page 29]

5

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4 And pulled against her, first straight down the hem 5 And then diagonally, then flapped and shook

6 The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind, 7 They made a dried-out undulating thwack.

8 So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand 9 For a split second as if nothing had happened 10 For nothing had that had not always happened 11 Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go, 12 Coming close again by holding back

13 In moves where I was x and she was o

14 Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.

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6

1 In the first flush of the Easter holidays 2 The ceremonies during Holy Week

3 Were highpoints of our Sons and Lovers phase. 4 The midnight fire. The paschal candlestick. 5 Elbow to elbow, glad to be kneeling next 6 To each other up there near the front

7 Of the packed church, we would follow the text 8 And rubrics for the blessing of the font.

9 As the hind longs for the streams, so my soul ... 10 Dippings. Towellings. The water breathed on. 11 The water mixed with chrism and with oil. 12 Cruet tinkle. Formal incensation

13 And the psalmist's outcry taken up with pride: 14 Day and night my tears have been my bread.

[Page 31]

7

1 In the last minutes he said more to her 2 Almost than in all their life together. 3 'You'll be in New Row on Monday night 4 And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad 5 When I walk in the door ... Isn't that right?'

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8 He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, 9 The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned 10 And we all knew one thing by being there. 11 The space we stood around had been emptied 12 Into us to keep, it penetrated

13 Clearances that suddenly stood open.

14 High cries were felled and a pure change happened.

[Page 32]

8

1 I thought of walking round and round a space 2 Utterly empty, utterly a source

3 Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place 4 In our front hedge above the wallflowers.

5 The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high. 6 I heard the hatchet's differentiated

7 Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh 8 And collapse of what luxuriated

9 Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all. 10 Deep planted and long gone, my coeval

11 Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,

12 Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere, 13 A soul ramifying and forever

14 Silent, beyond silence listened for.

[Page 33]

Heaney, Seamus:The Milk Factory [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 Scuts of froth swirled from the discharge pipe. 2 We halted on the other bank and watched 3 A milky water run from the pierced side 4 Of milk itself, the crock of its substance spilt 5 Across white limbo floors where shift-workers 6 Waded round the clock, and the factory

7 Kept its distance like a bright-decked star-ship.

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9 Astonished and assumed into fluorescence.

[Page 34]

Heaney, Seamus:The Summer of Lost Rachel [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 Potato crops are flowering, 2 Hard green plums appear

3 On damson trees at your back door 4 And every berried briar

5 Is glittering and dripping

6 Whenever showers plout down 7 On flooded hay and flooding drills. 8 There's a ring around the moon.

9 The whole summer was waterlogged 10 Yet everyone is loath

11 To trust the rain's soft-soaping ways 12 And sentiments of growth

13 Because all confidence in summer's 14 Unstinting largesse

15 Broke down last May when we laid you out 16 In white, your whited face

17 Gashed from the accident, but still, 18 So absolutely still,

19 And the setting sun set merciless 20 And every merciful

21 Register inside us yearned 22 To run the film back,

23 For you to step into the road

24 Wheeling your bright-rimmed bike,

[Page 35]

25 Safe and sound as usual, 26 Across, then down the lane,

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28 The awful skid-marks gone.

29 But no. So let the downpours flood 30 Our memory's riverbed

31 Until, in thick-webbed currents, 32 The life you might have led

33 Wavers and tugs dreamily 34 As soft-plumed waterweed

35 Which tempts our gaze and quietens it 36 And recollects our need.

[Page 36]

Heaney, Seamus:The Wishing Tree [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 I thought of her as the wishing tree that died 2 And saw it lifted, root and branch, to heaven, 3 Trailing a shower of all that had been driven

4 Need by need by need into its hale

5 Sap-wood and bark: coin and pin and nail 6 Came streaming from it like a comet-tail

7 New-minted and dissolved. I had a vision

8 Of an airy branch-head rising through damp cloud, 9 Of turned-up faces where the tree had stood.

[Page 37]

Heaney, Seamus:A Postcard from Iceland [from The Haw Lantern (1987), Faber and Faber]

1 As I dipped to test the stream some yards away 2 From a hot spring, I could hear nothing

3 But the whole mud-slick muttering and boiling.

4 And then my guide behind me saying,