Read Online New and Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney - Free Book Online Page B

would assist,
confess, receive. The verbs
    assumed us. We adored.
       
     
    And we lifted our eyes to the nouns.
Altar-stone was dawn and monstrance noon,
    the word rubric itself a bloodshot sunset.
       
     
    Now I live by a famous strand
where seabirds cry in the small hours
    like incredible souls
       
     
    and even the range wall of the promenade
that I press down on for conviction
hardly tempts me to credit it.

On the Road
     
     
    The road ahead
kept reeling in
at a steady speed,
    the verges dripped.
       
     
    In my hands
like a wrested trophy,
the empty round
    of the steering wheel.
       
     
    The trance of driving
made all roads one:
the seraph-haunted, Tuscan
    footpath, the green
       
     
    oak-alleys of Dordogne
or that track through corn
where the rich young man
    asked his question –
       
     
    Master, what must I
do to be saved?
Or the road where the bird
    with an earth-red back
       
     
    and a white and black
tail, like parquet
of flint and jet,
wheeled over me
       
     
    in visitation.
Sell all you have
and give to the poor .
    I was up and away
       
     
    like a human soul
that plumes from the mouth
in undulant, tenor
    black-letter Latin.
       
     
    I was one for sorrow,
Noah’s dove,
a panicked shadow
    crossing the deerpath.
       
     
    If I came to earth
it would be by way of
a small east window
    I once squeezed through,
       
     
    scaling heaven
by superstition,
drunk and happy
    on a chapel gable.
       
     
    I would roost a night
on the slab of exile,
then hide in the cleft
    of that churchyard wall
       
     
    where hand after hand
keeps wearing away
at the cold, hard-breasted
votive granite.
       
     
    And follow me .
I would migrate
through a high cave mouth
    into an oaten, sun-warmed cliff,
       
     
    on down the soft-nubbed,
clay-floored passage,
face-brush, wing-flap,
    to the deepest chamber.
       
     
    There a drinking deer
is cut into rock,
its haunch and neck
    rise with the contours,
       
     
    the incised outline
curves to a strained
expectant muzzle
    and a nostril flared
       
     
    at a dried-up source.
For my book of changes
I would meditate
    that stone-faced vigil
       
     
    until the long dumbfounded
spirit broke cover
to raise a dust
in the font of exhaustion.

For Bernard and Jane McCabe
     
     
    The riverbed, dried-up, half full of leaves.
      
     
Us, listening to a river in the trees.

Alphabets
     
     

I
     
    A shadow his father makes with joined hands
And thumbs and fingers nibbles on the wall
Like a rabbit’s head. He understands
He will understand more when he goes to school.
       
     
    There he draws smoke with chalk the whole first week,
Then draws the forked stick that they call a Y.
This is writing. A swan’s neck and swan’s back
    Make the 2 he can see now as well as say.
       
     
    Two rafters and a cross-tie on the slate
Are the letter some call ah , some call ay .
There are charts, there are headlines, there is a right
    Way to hold the pen and a wrong way.
       
     
    First it is ‘copying out’, and then ‘English’
Marked correct with a little leaning hoe.
Smells of inkwells rise in the classroom hush.
A globe in the window tilts like a coloured O.

II
     
    Declensions sang on air like a hosanna
As, column after stratified column,
Book One of Elementa Latina ,
Marbled and minatory, rose up in him.
       
     
    For he was fostered next in a stricter school
Named for the patron saint of the oak wood
Where classes switched to the pealing of a bell
    And he left the Latin forum for the shade
       
     
    Of new calligraphy that felt like home.
The letters of this alphabet were trees.
The capitals were orchards in full bloom,
    The lines of script like briars coiled in ditches.
       
     
    Here in her snooded garment and bare feet,
All ringleted in assonance and woodnotes,
The poet’s dream stole over him like sunlight
    And passed into the tenebrous thickets.
       
     
    He learns this other writing. He is the scribe
Who