Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
This is one of two poems dedicated to Mary Heaney, part of the collection North published in 1975. The collection is divided into two parts, both dealing with contemporary issues, particularly in relation to the Northern Ireland Troubles in the mid seventies, but one with close focus on the histori...
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.