Door into the Dark_Seamus Heaney.docx

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Heaney, Seamus: [Door into the Dark (1972)] , Faber and Faber

Heaney, Seamus

Bibl iographic detai ls for the Electronic Fi leHeaney, Seamus: Door into the Dark (1972)

Cambridge 1999

Chadwyck-Healey (a Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company)

The Faber Poetry Library / Twentieth-Century English Poetry

Copyright 2000 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company.

All Rights Reserved. Do not export or print from this database

without checking the Copyright Conditions to see what is permitted.

Bibl iographic detai ls for the Sour ce TextHeaney, Seamus

Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber form)(1939-) Door into the Dark

London

Faber and Faber 1972

ix, 42 p.

Preliminaries and introductory matter omitted. Copyright Seamus Heaney, 1972, reproduced under licence from Faber and

Faber Ltd

ISBN: 0571101267

Table of contents


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Door into the Dark (1972) by Heaney, Seamus

Night-Piece (1969)

Gone (1969)

Dream (1969)

The Outlaw (1969)

The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon (1969)

The Forge (1969)

Thatcher (1969)

The Peninsula (1969)

In Gallarus Oratory (1969)

Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965 (1969)

Requiem for the Croppies (1969)

Rite of Spring (1969)

Undine (1969)

The Wife's Tale (1969)

Mother (1969)

Cana Revisited (1969)

Elegy for a Still-born Child (1969)

I

IIIII

Victorian Guitar (1969)

Night Drive (1969)

At Ardboe Point (1969)

Relic of Memory (1969)

A Lough Neagh Sequence

Dedication

I Up the Shore (1969)

I

II

III

IV

2 Beyond Sargasso (1969)

3 Bait (1969)

4 Setting (1969)

I

II


3/40

5 Lifting (1969)

6 The Return (1969)

7 Vision (1969)

The Given Note (1969)

Whinlands (1969)

The Plantation (1969)

Shoreline (1969)

Bann Clay (1969)

Bogland (1969)

Heaney, Seamus : Night-Piece (1969)


4/40

1 Must you know it again?

2 Dull pounding through hay,

3 The uneasy whinny.

4 A sponge lip drawn off each separate tooth.

5 Opalescent haunch,

6 Muscle and hoof

7 Bundled under the roof.

Heaney, Seamus : Gone (1969)

1 Green froth that lathered each end

2 Of the shining bit

3 Is a cobweb of grass-dust.

4 The sweaty twist of the bellyband

5 Has stiffened, cold in the hand,

6 And pads of the blinkers

7 Bulge through the ticking.

8 Reins, chains and traces

9 Droop in a tangle.

10 His hot reek is lost.

11 The place is old in his must.

12 He cleared in a hurry

13 Clad only in shods

14 Leaving this stable unmade.

Heaney, Seamus : Dream (1969)


5/40

1 With a billhook

2 Whose head was hand-forged and heavy

3 I was hacking a stalk

4 Thick as a telegraph pole.

5 My sleeves were rolled

6 And the air fanned cool past my arms

7 As I swung and buried the blade,

8 Then laboured to work it unstuck.

9 The next stroke

10 Found a man's head under the hook.

11 Before I woke

12 I heard the steel stop

13 In the bone of the brow.

Heaney, Seamus : The Outlaw (1969)


6/40

1 Kelly's kept an unlicensed bull, well away

2 From the road: you risked a fine but had to pay

3 The normal fee if cows were serviced there.

4 Once I dragged a nervous Friesian on a tether

5 Down a lane of alder, shaggy with catkin,

6 Down to the shed the bull was kept in.

7 I gave Old Kelly the clammy silver, though why

8 I could not guess. He grunted a curt 'Go by.

9 Get up on that gate.' And from my lofty station

10 I watched the business-like conception.

11 The door, unbolted, whacked back against the wall.

12 The illegal sire fumbled from his stall

13 Unhurried as an old steam-engine shunting.

14 He circled, snored and nosed. No hectic panting,

15 Just the unfussy ease of a good tradesman;

16 Then an awkward, unexpected jump, and,

17 His knobbled forelegs straddling her flank,

18 He slammed life home, impassive as a tank,

19 Dropping off like a tipped-up load of sand.

20 'She'll do,' said Kelly and tapped his ash-plant

21 Across her hindquarters. 'If not, bring her back.'

22 I walked ahead of her, the rope now slack,

23 While Kelly whooped and prodded his outlaw

24 Who, in his own time, resumed the dark, the straw.

Heaney, Seamus : The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon (1969)


7/40

1 The ridged lip set upstream, you flail

2 Inland again, your exile in the sea

3 Unconditionally cancelled by the pull

4 Of your home water's gravity.

5 And I stand in the centre, casting.

6 The river cramming under me reflects

7 Slung gaff and net and a white wrist flicking

8 Flies well-dressed with tint and fleck.

9 Walton thought garden worms, perfumed

10 By oil crushed from dark ivy berries

11 The lure that took you best, but here you come

12 To grief through hunger in your eyes.

13 Ripples arrowing beyond me,

14 The current strumming water up my leg,

15 Involved in water's choreography

16 I go, like you, by gleam and drag

17 And will strike when you strike, to kill.18 We're both annihilated on the fly.

19 You can't resist a gullet full of steel.

20 I will turn home, fish-smelling, scaly.

Heaney, Seamus : The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon (1969)


8/40

1 The ridged lip set upstream, you flail

2 Inland again, your exile in the sea

3 Unconditionally cancelled by the pull

4 Of your home water's gravity.

5 And I stand in the centre, casting.

6 The river cramming under me reflects

7 Slung gaff and net and a white wrist flicking

8 Flies well-dressed with tint and fleck.

9 Walton thought garden worms, perfumed

10 By oil crushed from dark ivy berries

11 The lure that took you best, but here you come

12 To grief through hunger in your eyes.

13 Ripples arrowing beyond me,

14 The current strumming water up my leg,

15 Involved in water's choreography

16 I go, like you, by gleam and drag

17 And will strike when you strike, to kill.18 We're both annihilated on the fly.

19 You can't resist a gullet full of steel.

20 I will turn home, fish-smelling, scaly.

Heaney, Seamus : Thatcher (1969)


9/40

1 Bespoke for weeks, he turned up some morning

2 Unexpectedly, his bicycle slung

3 With a light ladder and a bag of knives.

4 He eyed the old rigging, poked at the eaves,

5 Opened and handled sheaves of lashed wheat-straw.

6 Next, the bundled rods: hazel and willow

7 Were flicked for weight, twisted in case they'd snap.

8 It seemed he spent the morning warming up:

9 Then fixed the ladder, laid out well-honed blades

10 And snipped at straw and sharpened ends of rods

11 That, bent in two, made a white-pronged staple

12 For pinning down his world, handful by handful.

13 Couchant for days on sods above the rafters,

14 He shaved and flushed the butts, stitched all together

15 Into a sloped honeycomb, a stubble patch,

16 And left them gaping at his Midas touch.

Heaney, Seamus : The Peninsula (1969)


10/40

1 When you have nothing more to say, just drive

2 For a day all round the peninsula.

3 The sky is tall as over a runway,

4 The land without marks so you will not arrive

5 But pass through, though always skirting landfall.

6 At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,

7 The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable

8 And you're in the dark again. Now recall

9 The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,

10 That rock where breakers shredded into rags,

11 The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,

12 Islands riding themselves out into the fog

13 And drive back home, still with nothing to say

14 Except that now you will uncode all landscapes

15 By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,

16 Water and ground in their extremity.

Heaney, Seamus : In Gallarus Oratory (1969)


11/40

1 You can still feel the community pack

2 This place: it's like going into a turfstack,

3 A core of old dark walled up with stone

4 A yard thick. When you're in it alone,

5 You might have dropped, a reduced creature,

6 To the heart of the globe. No worshipper

7 Would leap up to his God off this floor.

8 Founded there like heroes in a barrow,

9 They sought themselves in the eye of their King

10 Under the black weight of their own breathing.

11 And how he smiled on them as out they came,

12 The sea a censer and the grass a flame.

Heaney, Seamus : Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965 (1969)


12/40

1 The swell foams where they float and crawl,

2 A catherine-wheel of arm and hand;

3 Each head bobs curtly as a football.

4 The yelps are faint here on the strand.

5 No milk-limbed Venus ever rose

6 Miraculous on this western shore.

7 A pirate queen in battle clothes

8 Is our sterner myth. The breakers pour

9 Themselves into themselves, the years

10 Shuttle through space invisibly.

11 Where crests unfurl like creamy beer

12 The queen's clothes melt into the sea

13 And generations sighing in

14 The salt suds where the wave has crashed

15 Labour in fear of flesh and sin

16 For the time has been accomplished

17 As through the shallows in swimsuits,18 Bare-legged, smooth-shouldered and long-backed,

19 They wade ashore with skips and shouts.

20 So Venus comes, matter-of-fact.

Heaney, Seamus : Requiem for the Croppies (1969)


13/40

1 The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley---

2 No kitchens on the run, no striking camp---

3 We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

4 The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

5 A people, hardly marching---on the hike---

6 We found new tactics happening each day:

7 We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike

8 And stampede cattle into infantry,

9 Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

10 Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.

11 Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

12 The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

13 They buried us without shroud or coffin

14 And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.

Heaney, Seamus : Requiem for the Croppies (1969)


14/40

1 The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley---

2 No kitchens on the run, no striking camp---

3 We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

4 The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

5 A people, hardly marching---on the hike---

6 We found new tactics happening each day:

7 We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike

8 And stampede cattle into infantry,

9 Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

10 Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.

11 Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

12 The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

13 They buried us without shroud or coffin

14 And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.

Heaney, Seamus : Rite of Spring (1969)


15/40

1 So winter closed its fist

2 And got it stuck in the pump.

3 The plunger froze up a lump

4 In its throat, ice founding itself

5 Upon iron. The handle

6 Paralysed at an angle.

7 Then the twisting of wheat straw

8 Into ropes, lapping them tight

9 Round stem and snout, then a light

10 That sent the pump up in flame.

11 It cooled, we lifted her latch,

12 Her entrance was wet, and she came.

Heaney, Seamus : Undine (1969)


16/40

1 He slashed the briars, shovelled up grey silt

2 To give me right of way in my own drains

3 And I ran quick for him, cleaned out my rust.

4 He halted, saw me finally disrobed,

5 Running clear, with apparent unconcern.

6 Then he walked by me. I rippled and I churned

7 Where ditches intersected near the river

8 Until he dug a spade deep in my flank

9 And took me to him. I swallowed his trench

10 Gratefully, dispersing myself for love

11 Down in his roots, climbing his brassy grain---

12 But once he knew my welcome, I alone

13 Could give him subtle increase and reflection.

14 He explored me so completely, each limb

15 Lost its cold freedom. Human, warmed to him.

Heaney, Seamus : The Wife's Tale (1969)


17/40

1 When I had spread it all on linen cloth

2 Under the hedge, I called them over.

3 The hum and gulp of the thresher ran down

4 And the big belt slewed to a standstill, straw

5 Hanging undelivered in the jaws.

6 There was such quiet that I heard their boots

7 Crunching the stubble twenty yards away.

8 He lay down and said 'Give these fellows theirs,

9 I'm in no hurry,' plucking grass in handfuls

10 And tossing it in the air. 'That looks well.'

11 (He nodded at my white cloth on the grass.)

12 'I declare a woman could lay out a field

13 Though boys like us have little call for cloths.'

14 He winked, then watched me as I poured a cup

15 And buttered the thick slices that he likes.

16 'It's threshing better than I thought, and mind

17 It's good clean seed. Away over there and look.'18 Always this inspection has to be made

19 Even when I don't know what to look for.

20 But I ran my hand in the half-filled bags

21 Hooked to the slots. It was hard as shot,

22 Innumerable and cool. The bags gaped

23 Where the chutes ran back to the stilled drum

24 And forks were stuck at angles in the ground

25 As javelins might mark lost battlefields.

26 I moved between them back across the stubble.

27 They lay in the ring of their own crusts and dregs

28 Smoking and saying nothing. 'There's good yield,

29 Isn't there?'---as proud as if he were the land itself---

30 'Enough for crushing and for sowing both.'

31 And that was it. I'd come and he had shown me

32 So I belonged no further to the work.


18/40

33 I gathered cups and folded up the cloth

34 And went. But they still kept their ease

35 Spread out, unbuttoned, grateful, under the trees.

Heaney, Seamus : Mother (1969)


19/40

1 As I work at the pump, the wind heavy

2 With spits of rain is fraying

3 The rope of water I'm pumping.

4 It pays itself out like air's afterbirth

5 At each gulp of the plunger.

6 I am tired of the feeding of stock.

7 Each evening I labour this handle

8 Half an hour at a time, the cows

9 Guzzling at bowls in the byre.

10 Before I have topped up the level

11 They lower it down.

12 They've trailed in again by the ready-made gate

13 He stuck into the fence: a jingling bedhead

14 Wired up between posts. It's on its last legs.

15 It does not jingle for joy any more.

16 I am tired of walking about with this plunger

17 Inside me. God, he plays like a young calf18 Gone wild on a rope.

19 Lying or standing won't settle these capers,

20 This gulp in my well.

21 O when I am a gate for myself

22 Let such wind fray my waters

23 As scarfs my skirt through my thighs,

24 Stuffs air down my throat.

Heaney, Seamus : Cana Revisited (1969)


20/40

1 No round-shouldered pitchers here, no stewards

2 To supervise consumption or supplies

3 And water locked behind the taps implies

4 No expectation of miraculous words.

5 But in the bone-hooped womb, rising like yeast,

6 Virtue intact is waiting to be shown,

7 The consecration wondrous (being their own)

8 As when the water reddened at the feast.

Heaney, Seamus : Elegy for a Still-born Child (1969)


21/40

I

1 Your mother walks light as an empty creel

2 Unlearning the intimate nudge and pull

3 Your trussed-up weight of seed-flesh and bone-curd

4 Had insisted on. That evicted world

5 Contracts round its history, its scar.

6 Doomsday struck when your collapsed sphere

7 Extinguished itself in our atmosphere,

8 Your mother heavy with the lightness in her.

II

1 For six months you stayed cartographer,

2 Charting my friend from husband towards father.

3 He guessed a globe behind your steady mound.

4 Then the pole fell, shooting star, into the ground.

III

1 On lonely journeys I think of it all,

2 Birth of death, exhumation for burial,

3 A wreath of small clothes, a memorial pram,

4 And parents reaching for a phantom limb.

5 I drive by remote control on this bare road

6 Under a drizzling sky, a circling rook,

7 Past mountain fields, full to the brim with cloud,

8 White waves riding home on a wintry lough.

Heaney, Seamus : Victorian Guitar (1969)


22/40

For David Hammond

Inscribed 'Belonged to Louisa Catherine Coe before her marriage to John Charles Smith,

March 1852.'

1 I expected the lettering to carry

2 The date of the gift, a kind of christening:

3 This is more like the plate on a coffin.

4 Louisa Catherine Smith could not be light.

5 Far more than a maiden name

6 Was cancelled by him on the first night.

7 I believe he cannot have known your touch

8 Like this instrument---for clearly

9 John Charles did not hold with fingering---

10 Which is obviously a lady's:

11 The sound-box trim as a girl in stays,

12 The neck right for the smallest span.

13 Did you even keep track of it as a wife?

14 Do you know the man who has it now

15 Is giving it the time of its life?

Heaney, Seamus : Night Drive (1969)


23/40

1 The smells of ordinariness

2 Were new on the night drive through France:

3 Rain and hay and woods on the air

4 Made warm draughts in the open car.

5 Signposts whitened relentlessly.

6 Montreuil, Abbville, Beauvais

7 Were promised, promised, came and went,

8 Each place granting its name's fulfilment.

9 A combine groaning its way late

10 Bled seeds across its work-light.

11 A forest fire smouldered out.

12 One by one small cafs shut.

13 I thought of you continuously

14 A thousand miles south where Italy

15 Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.

16 Your ordinariness was renewed there.

Heaney, Seamus : At Ardboe Point (1969)


24/40

1 Right along the lough shore

2 A smoke of flies

3 Drifts thick in the sunset.

4 They come shattering daintily

5 Against the windscreen,

6 The grill and bonnet whisper

7 At their million collisions:

8 It is to drive through

9 A hail of fine chaff.

10 Yet we leave no clear wake

11 For they open and close on us

12 As the air opens and closes.

13 Tonight when we put out our light

14 To kiss between sheets

15 Their just audible siren will go

16 Outside the window,17 Their invisible veil

18 Weakening the moonlight still further,

19 And the walls will carry a rash

20 Of them, a green pollen.

21 They'll have infiltrated our clothes by morning.

22 If you put one under a lens

23 You'd be looking at a pumping body

24 With such outsize beaters for wings

25 That this visitation would seem

26 More drastic than Pharaoh's.

27 I'm told they're mosquitoes

28 But I'd need forests and swamps

29 To believe it


25/40

30 For these are our innocent, shuttling

31 Choirs, dying through

32 Their own live empyrean, troublesome only

33 As the last veil on a dancer.

Heaney, Seamus : Relic of Memory (1969)


26/40

1 The lough waters

2 Can petrify wood:

3 Old oars and posts

4 Over the years

5 Harden their grain,

6 Incarcerate ghosts

7 Of sap and season.

8 The shallows lap

9 And give and take:

10 Constant ablutions,

11 Such drowning love

12 Stun a stake

13 To stalagmite.

14 Dead lava,

15 The cooling star,

16 Coal and diamond

17 Or sudden birth

18 Of burnt meteor

19 Are too simple,

20 Without the lure

21 That relic stored---

22 A piece of stone

23 On the shelf at school,

24 Oatmeal coloured.

A Lough Neagh Sequence


27/40

Dedication

For the fishermen

Heaney, Seamus : I Up the Shore(1969)

I

1 The lough will claim a victim every year.

2 It has virtue that hardens wood to stone.

3 There is a town sunk beneath its water.

4 It is the scar left by the Isle of Man.

II

1 At Toomebridge where it sluices towards the sea

2 They've set new gates and tanks against the flow.

3 From time to time they break the eels' journey

4 And lift five hundred stones in one go.

III

1 But up the shore in Antrim and Tyrone

2 There is a sense of fair play in the game.

3 The fishermen confront them one by one

4 And sail miles out and never learn to swim.

IV

1 'We'll be the quicker going down,' they say.

2 And when you argue there are no storms here,


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3 That one hour floating's sure to land them safely---

4 'The lough will claim a victim every year.'

Heaney, Seamus : 2 Beyond Sargasso(1969)

1 A gland agitating

2 mud two hundred miles in-

3 land, a scale of water

4 on water working up

5 estuaries, he drifted

6 into motion half-way7 across the Atlantic,

8 sure as the satellite's

9 insinuating pull

10 in the ocean, as true

11 to his orbit.

12 Against

13 ebb, current, rock, rapids,

14 a muscled icicle

15 that melts itself longer

16 and fatter, he buries

17 his arrival beyond

18 light and tidal water,

19 investing silt and sand

20 with a sleek root. By day,

21 only the drainmaker's

22 spade or the mud paddler

23 can make him abort. Dark

24 delivers him hungering

25 down each undulation.

Heaney, Seamus : 3 Bait(1969)


29/40

1 Lamps dawdle in the field at midnight.

2 Three men follow their nose in the grass,

3 The lamp's beam their prow and compass.

4 The bucket's handle better not clatter now:

5 Silence and curious light gather bait.

6 Nab him, but wait

7 For the first shrinking, tacky on the thumb.

8 Let him re-settle backwards in his tunnel.

9 Then draw steady and he'll come.

10 Among the millions whorling their mud coronas

11 Under dew-lapped leaf and bowed blades,

12 A few are bound to be rustled in these night raids,

13 Innocent ventilators of the ground,

14 Making the globe a perfect fit,

15 A few are bound to be cheated of it

16 When lamps dawdle in the field at midnight,17 When fishers need a garland for the bay

18 And have him, where he needs to come, out of the clay.

Heaney, Seamus : 4 Setting (1969)


30/40

I

1 A line goes out of sight and out of mind

2 Down to the soft bottom of silt and sand

3 Past the indifferent skill of the hunting hand.

4 A bouquet of small hooks coiled in the stern

5 Is being paid out, back to its true form,

6 Until the bouquet's hidden in the worm.

7 The boat rides forward where the line slants back.

8 The oars in their locks go round and round.

9 The eel describes his arcs without a sound.

II

1 The gulls fly and umbrella overhead,

2 Treading air as soon as the line runs out,

3 Responsive acolytes above the boat.

4 Not sensible of any kyrie,

5 The fishers, who don't know and never try,

6 Pursue the work in hand as destiny.

7 They clear the bucket of the last chopped worms,

8 Pitching them high, good riddance, earthy shower.

9 The gulls encompass them before the water.

Heaney, Seamus : 5 Lifting (1969)


31/40

1 They're busy in a high boat

2 That stalks towards Antrim, the power cut.

3 The line's a filament of smut

4 Drawn hand over fist

5 Where every three yards a hook's missed

6 Or taken (and the smut thickens, wrist-

7 Thick, a flail

8 Lashed into the barrel

9 With one swing). Each eel

10 Comes aboard to this welcome:

11 The hook left in gill or gum,

12 It's slapped into the barrel numb

13 But knits itself, four-ply,

14 With the furling, slippy

15 Haul, a knot of back and pewter belly

16 That stays continuously one17 For each catch they fling in

18 Is sucked home like lubrication.

19 And wakes are enwound as the catch

20 On the morning water: which

21 Boat was which?

22 And when did this begin?

23 This morning, last year, when the lough first spawned?

24 The crews will answer, 'Once the season's in.'


32/40

Heaney, Seamus : 6 The Return(1969)

1 In ponds, drains, dead canals,

2 she turns her head back,

3 older now, following

4 whim deliberately

5 till she's at sea in grass

6 and damned if she'll turn so

7 it's new trenches, sunk pipes,

8 swamps, running streams, the lough,

9 the river. Her stomach

10 shrunk, she exhilarates11 in mid-water. Its throbbing

12 is speed through days and weeks.

13 Who knows now if she knows

14 her depth or direction?

15 She's passed Malin and

16 Tory, silent, wakeless,

17 a wisp, a wick that is

18 its own taper and light

19 through the weltering dark.

20 Where she's lost once she lays

21 ten thousand feet down in

22 her origins. The current

23 carries slicks of orphaned spawn.

Heaney, Seamus : 7Vision

(1969)


33/40

1 Unless his hair was fine-combed,

2 The lice, they said, would gang up

3 Into a mealy rope

4 And drag him, small, dirty, doomed,

5 Down to the water. He was

6 Cautious then in riverbank

7 Fields. Thick as a birch trunk,

8 That cable flexed in the grass

9 Every time the wind passed. Years

10 Later in the same fields

11 He stood at night when eels

12 Moved through the grass like hatched fears

13 Towards the water. To stand

14 In one place as the field flowed

15 Past, a jellied road,

16 To watch the eels crossing land

17 Re-wound his world's live girdle.18 Phosphorescent, sinewed slime

19 Continued at his feet. Time

20 Confirmed the horrid cable.

Heaney, Seamus : The Given Note (1969)


34/40

1 On the most westerly Blasket

2 In a dry-stone hut

3 He got this air out of the night.

4 Strange noises were heard

5 By others who followed, bits of a tune

6 Coming in on loud weather

7 Though nothing like melody.

8 He blamed their fingers and ear

9 As unpractised, their fiddling easy,

10 For he had gone alone into the island

11 And brought back the whole thing.

12 The house throbbed like his full violin.

13 So whether he calls it spirit music

14 Or not, I don't care. He took it

15 Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.

16 Still he maintains, from nowhere.17 It comes off the bow gravely,

18 Rephrases itself into the air.

Heaney, Seamus : Whinlands (1969)


35/40

1 All year round the whin

2 Can show a blossom or two

3 But it's in full bloom now.

4 As if the small yolk stain

5 From all the birds' eggs in

6 All the nests of the spring

7 Were spiked and hung

8 Everywhere on bushes to ripen.

9 Hills oxidize gold.

10 Above the smoulder of green shoot

11 And dross of dead thorns underfoot

12 The blossoms scald.

13 Put a match under

14 Whins, they go up of a sudden.

15 They make no flame in the sun

16 But a fierce heat tremor

17 Yet incineration like that18 Only takes the thorn---

19 The tough sticks don't burn,

20 Remain like bone, charred horn.

21 Gilt, jaggy, springy, frilled,

22 This stunted, dry richness

23 Persists on hills, near stone ditches,

24 Over flintbed and battlefield.

Heaney, Seamus : The Plantation (1969)


36/40

1 Any point in that wood

2 Was a centre, birch trunks

3 Ghosting your bearings,

4 Improvising charmed rings

5 Wherever you stopped.

6 Though you walked a straight line,

7 It might be a circle you travelled

8 With toadstools and stumps

9 Always repeating themselves.

10 Or did you re-pass them?

11 Here were bleyberries quilting the floor,

12 The black char of a fire,

13 And having found them once

14 You were sure to find them again.

15 Someone had always been there

16 Though always you were alone.

17 Lovers, birdwatchers,18 Campers, gipsies and tramps

19 Left some trace of their trades

20 Or their excrement.

21 Hedging the road so,

22 It invited all comers

23 To the hush and the mush

24 Of its whispering treadmill,

25 Its limits defined,

26 So they thought, from outside.

27 They must have been thankful

28 For the hum of the traffic

29 If they ventured in

30 Past the picnickers' belt

31 Or began to recall


37/40

32 Tales of fog on the mountains.

33 You had to come back

34 To learn how to lose yourself,

35 To be pilot and stray---witch,

36 Hansel and Gretel in one.

Heaney, Seamus : Shoreline (1969)


38/40

1 Turning a corner, taking a hill

2 In County Down, there's the sea

3 Sidling and settling to

4 The back of a hedge. Or else

5 A grey foreshore with puddles

6 Dead-eyed as fish.

7 Haphazard tidal craters march

8 The corn and the grazing.

9 All round Antrim and westward

10 Two hundred miles at Moher

11 Basalt stands to.

12 Both ocean and channel

13 Froth at the black locks

14 On Ireland. And strands

15 Take hissing submissions

16 Off Wicklow and Mayo.

17 Take any minute. A tide18 Is rummaging in

19 At the foot of all fields,

20 All cliffs and shingles.

21 Listen. Is it the Danes,

22 A black hawk bent on the sail?

23 Or the chinking Normans?

24 Or currachs hopping high

25 On to the sand?

26 Strangford, Arklow, Carrickfergus,

27 Belmullet and Ventry

28 Stay, forgotten like sentries.

Heaney, Seamus : Bann Clay (1969)


39/40

1 Labourers pedalling at ease

2 Past the end of the lane

3 Were white with it. Dungarees

4 And boots wore its powdery stain.

5 All day in open pits

6 They loaded on to the bank

7 Slabs like the squared-off clots

8 Of a blue cream. Sunk

9 For centuries under the grass,

10 It baked white in the sun,

11 Relieved its hoarded waters

12 And began to ripen.

13 It underruns the valley,

14 The first slow residue

15 Of a river finding its way.

16 Above it, the webbed marsh is new,

17 Even the clutch of Mesolithic18 Flints. Once, cleaning a drain,

19 I shovelled up livery slicks

20 Till the water gradually ran

21 Clear on its old floor.

22 Under the humus and roots

23 This smooth weight. I labour

24 Towards it still. It holds and gluts.

Heaney, Seamus : Bogland (1969)For T. P. Flanagan


40/40

1 We have no prairies

2 To slice a big sun at evening---

3 Everywhere the eye concedes to

4 Encroaching horizon,

5 Is wooed into the cyclops' eye

6 Of a tarn. Our unfenced country

7 Is bog that keeps crusting

8 Between the sights of the sun.

9 They've taken the skeleton

10 Of the Great Irish Elk

11 Out of the peat, set it up

12 An astounding crate full of air.

13 Butter sunk under

14 More than a hundred years

15 Was recovered salty and white.

16 The ground itself is kind, black butter

17 Melting and opening underfoot,

18 Missing its last definition

19 By millions of years.

20 They'll never dig coal here,

21 Only the waterlogged trunks

22 Of great firs, soft as pulp.

23 Our pioneers keep striking

24 Inwards and downwards,

25 Every layer they strip

26 Seems camped on before.

27 The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

28 The wet centre is bottomless.

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