North

Home > Other > North > Page 4
North Page 4

by Seamus Heaney


  The stained cape of his heart as history charged.

  5. FOSTERAGE

  For Michael McLaverty

  'Description is revelation!' Royal

  Avenue, Belfast, 1962,

  A Saturday afternoon, glad to meet

  Me, newly cubbed in language, he gripped

  My elbow. 'Listen. Go your own way.

  Do your own work. Remember

  Katherine Mansfield---I will tell

  How the laundry basket squeaked ... that note of exile.'

  But to hell with overstating it:

  'Don't have the veins bulging in your biro.'

  And then, 'Poor Hopkins!' I have the Journals

  He gave me, underlined, his buckled self

  Obeisant to their pain. He discerned

  The lineaments of patience everywhere

  And fostered me and sent me out, with words

  Imposing on my tongue like obols.

  6. 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

  Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,

  And I sometimes see a falling star.

  If I could come on meteorite!

  Instead I walk through damp leaves,

  Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,

  Imagining a hero

  On some muddy compound,

  His gift like a slingstone

  Whirled for the desperate.

  How did I end up like this?

  I often think of my friends'

  Beautiful prismatic counselling

  And the anvil brains of some who hate me

  As I sit weighing and weighing

  My responsible tristia.

  For what? For the ear? For the people?

  For what is said behind-backs?

  Rain comes down through the alders,

  Its low conducive voices

  Mutter about let-downs and erosions

  And yet each drop recalls

  The diamond absolutes.

  I am neither internee nor informer;

  An inner émigré, grown long-haired

  And thoughtful; a wood-kerne

  Escaped from the massacre,

  Taking protective colouring

  From bole and bark, feeling

  Every wind that blows;

  Who, blowing up these sparks

  For their meagre heat, have missed

  The once-in-a-lifetime portent,

  The comet's pulsing rose.

  [END OF BOOK]

 

 

 


‹ Prev