Seamus Heaney: Three Poems

"This temperamental disposition towards an art that was earnest and devoted to things as they are was corroborated by the experience of having been born and brought up in Northern Ireland and of having lived with that place even though I have lived out of it for the past quarter of a century."

--Seamus Heaney

"To begin with, I wanted that truth to life to possess a concrete reliability, and rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct, an upfront representation of the world it stood in for or stood up for or stood its ground against."
--Seamus Heaney

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 first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were pepperedWith thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication 1. Sunlight There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the bakeboard, the reddening stove sent its plaque of heat against her where she stood in a floury apron by the window. Now she dusts the board with a goose's wing, now sits, broad-lapped, with whitened nails and measling shins: here is a space again, the scone rising to the tick of two clocks. And here is love like a tinsmith's scoop sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin. 2. The Seed Cutters They seem hundreds of years away. Brueghel, You'll know them if I can get them true. They kneel under the hedge in a half-circle Behind a windbreak wind is breaking through. They are the seed cutters. The tuck and frill Of leaf-sprout is on the seed potates Buried under that straw. With time to kill, They are taking their time. Each sharp knife goes Lazily halving each root that falls apart In the palm of the hand: a milky gleam, And, at the centre, a dark watermark. Oh, calendar customs! Under the broom Yellowing over them, compose the frieze With all of us there, our anonymities. Poetry, Main Collections 1966: Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber 1969: Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber 1972: Wintering Out, Faber & Faber 1975: North, Faber & Faber 1979: Field Work, Faber & Faber 1984: Station Island, Faber & Faber 1987: The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber 1991: Seeing Things, Faber & Faber 1996: The Spirit Level Faber & Faber 2001: Electric Light, Faber & Faber 2006: District and Circle, Faber & Faber Poetry, Collected Editions 1980: Selected Poems 1965-1975, Faber & Faber 1990: New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Faber & Faber 1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, Faber & Faber