Seamus Heaney -The swing-
The swing
Seamus Heaney (Ireland, 1939-
)
1
Fingertips
just tipping you would send you
Every bit
as far - once you got going -
As a big push in the back.
Sooner or
later,
We all
learnt one by one to go sky-high,
Backward
and forward in the open shed,
Toeing and
rowing and jackknifing through air.
2
Not Fragonard. Nor Breughel.
It was more
Hans Memling's light of heaven off green grass,
Light over
fields and hedges, the shed-mouth
Sunstruck
and expectant, the bedding-straw
Piled to
one side like a nativity
Foreground and background waiting for the figures.
And then,
in the middle ground, the swing itself
(...)
Postscript
Seamus Heaney (Ireland, 1939- )
And some
time make the time to drive out west
Into
In
September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the
ocean on one side is wild
With foam
and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface
of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the
earthed lightening of a flock of swans,
Their
feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully
grown headstrong looking heads
Tucked or
cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to
think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry
through which known and strange things pass
As big soft
buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch
the heart off guard and blow it open.
The haw lantern
Seamus Heaney (Ireland, 1939-
)
The wintry
haw is burning out of season,
crab of
the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting
no more from them but that they keep
the wick
of self-respect from dying out,
not
having to blind them with illumination.
(…)
Follower
Seamus Heaney (Ireland, 1939-
)
My father
worked with a horse-plough,
His
shoulders gloved like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses
strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert.
He would set the wing
And fit the
bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod
rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins,
the sweating team turned round
And back
into the land. His eye
Narrowed
and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled
in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell
sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes
he rode me on his back
Dipping and
rising to his plod.
I wanted to
grow up and plough,
To close
one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever
did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a
nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my
father who keeps stumbling
Behind me,
and will not go away.
Source:
http://poemaseningles.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_poemaseningles_archive.html#116396873063115015