For Mary Heaney
From "North", 1975
#Irish #NobelPrize #XXCentury #XXICentury #IrishWriters
As if he had been poured in tar, he lies on a pillow of turf and seems to weep the black river of himself.
My “place of clear water”, the first hill in the world where springs washed into the shiny grass and darkened cobbles
She taught me what her uncle once… How easily the biggest coal block… If you got the grain and the hamme… The sound of that relaxed alluring… Its co-opted and obliterated echo,
The piper coming from far away is… With a whitewash brush for a sporr… Wobbling round you, a kitchen chai… Upside down on your shoulder, your… Pretending to tuck the bag beneath…
I sat all morning in the college s… Counting bells knelling classes to… At two o’clock our neighbors drove… In the porch I met my father cryi… He had always taken funerals in hi…
As a child, they could not keep me… And old pumps with buckets and win… I loved the dark drop, the trapped… Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss… One, in a brickyard, with a rotted…
Fishermen at Ballyshannon Netted an infant last night Along with the salmon. An illegitimate spawning, A small one thrown back
The pockets of our greatcoats full… No kitchens on the run, no strikin… We moved quick and sudden in our o… The priest lay behind ditches with… A people hardly marching... on the…
I can feel the tug of the halter at the nape of her neck, the wind on her naked front. It blows her nipples
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,
Our shells clacked on the plates. My tongue was a filling estuary, My palate hung with starlight: As I tasted the salty Pleiades Orion dipped his foot into the wat…
On the grass when I arrive, Filling the stillness with life, But ready to scare off At the very first wrong move. In the ivy when I leave.
Shifting brilliancies. Then winte… In a doorway, and on the stone doo… A beggar shivering in silhouette. So the particular judgement might… Bare wallstead and a cold hearth r…
The wintry haw is burning out of s… crab of the thorn, a small light f… wanting no more from them but that… the wick of self-respect from dyin… not having to blind them with illu…
When all the others were away at… I was all hers as we peeled potato… They broke the silence, let fall o… Like solder weeping off the solder… Cold comforts set between us, thin…