For more than 1,000 years ago; not as long ago as it seems. #amazonlink to Irish poet Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems 1988-2013: https://amzn.to/3Oyb3xk from Beowulf / translated from the Old English by Seamus Heaney No counsellor could ever expect fair reparation from those rabid hands. All were endangered; young and old... {important information for you for the #amazonlink: as an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases}
20th-Century Irish Poetry
DPF / Heaney
For the rain in Texas, which sometimes falls too little and sometimes falls so much too much, from The Spirit Level.
from The Rain Stick / by Seamus Heaney
Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for.
DPF / Heaney
For fathers and paper boats, from The Spirit Level.
from The Flight Path / by Seamus Heaney
A dove rose in my breast
Every time my father’s hands came clean
With a paper boat between them, ark in air,
The lines of it as taut as a pegged tent
DPF / Heaney
For my friends at St. Brigid Press, and for a pretty, signed, Faber and Faber Limited first-edition of The Spirit Level, from a time when I could afford such things.
from A Brigid’s Girdle / by Seamus Heaney
Now it’s St. Brigid’s Day and the first snowdrop
in County Wicklow, and this is a Brigid’s Girdle
I’m plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they’d trindle),
Twisted straw that’s lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.
DPF / Heaney
For scribes for which Heaney has an argument here, from Opened Ground.
from The Scribes / by Seamus Heaney
I never warmed to them.
If they were excellent they were petulant
and jaggy as the holly tree
they rendered down for ink.
DPF / Heaney
For the mysteries of nests, from Opened Ground.
from Nesting-Ground / by Seamus Heaney
As he stood sentry, gazing, waiting, he thought of putting his ear to one of the abandoned holes and listening for the silence underground.
DPF / Heaney
For summer and Heaney, from Opened Ground.
from Summer Home / by Seamus Heaney
Bushing the door, my arms full
of wild cherry and rhododendron,
I hear her small lost weeping
through the hall
DPF / Heaney
For the Irish sea, from Opened Ground.
from North / by Seamus Heaney
It said, “Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.
DPF / Heaney
For mothers, from North.
from Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication: for Mary Heaney / by Seamus Heaney
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.
DPF / Heaney
For how could I forget Heaney on St. Patrick’s Day? This one’s a favorite from North.
from The Grauballe Man / by Seamus Heaney
As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep
the black river of himself.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 