Seamus Heaney
Testimony
‘We were killing pigs when the Yanks arrived. A Tuesday morning, sunlight And gutter-blood Outside the slaughter house. >From the main road They would have heard the screaming, Then heard it stop and had
Limbo
Fishermen at Ballyshannon Netted an infant last night Along with the salmon. An illegitimate spawning, A small one thrown back To the waters. But I’m sure As she stood in the shallows Ducking him
Mid-Term Break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying He had
Follower
My father worked with a horse-plough, His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horse strained at his clicking tongue. An expert. He would set the wing
Casualty
I He would drink by himself And raise a weathered thumb Towards the high shelf, Calling another rum And blackcurrant, without Having to raise his voice, Or order a quick stout By a lifting
Twice Shy
Her scarf a la Bardot, In suede flats for the walk, She came with me one evening For air and friendly talk. We crossed the quiet river, Took the embankment walk. Traffic holding its
Requiem for the Croppies
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley… No kitchens on the run, no striking camp… We moved quick and sudden in our own country. The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp. A
The Otter
When you plunged The light of Tuscany wavered And swung through the pool From top to bottom. I loved your wet head and smashing crawl, Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders Surfacing and surfacing
The Grauballe Man
As if he had been poured In tar, he lies On a pillow of turf And seems to weep The black river of himself. The grain of his wrists Is like bog oak, The
Anahorish
My “place of clear water,” The first hill in the world Where springs washed into The shiny grass And darkened cobbles In the bed of the lane. Anahorish, soft gradient Of consonant, vowel-meadow, After-image
Strange Fruit
Here is the girl’s head like an exhumed gourd. Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth. They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair And made an exhibition of its coil, Let the air at her
Blackberry-Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that
Exposure
It is December in Wicklow: Alders dripping, birches Inheriting the last light, The ash tree cold to look at. A comet that was lost Should be visible at sunset, Those million tons of light
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pin rest; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down
Song
A rowan like a lipsticked girl. Between the by-road and the main road Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance Stand off among the rushes. There are the mud-flowers of dialect And the