In Time For Síofra (August 18, 2013) By Seamus Heaney Energy, balance, outbreak: Listening to Bach I saw you years from now (More years than I’ll be allowed) Your toddler wobbles gone, A sure and grown woman. Your bare foot on the floor Keeps me in step; the power I first felt come up through Our […]

In the Attic By Seamus Heaney Like Jim Hawkins aloft in the crosstrees Of Hispaniola, nothing underneath him But still green water and clean bottom sand, The ship aground, the canted mast far out Above a seafloor where striped fish pass in shoals— And when they’ve passed, the face of Israel Hands That rose in the […]

Clearances BY SEAMUS HEANEY   In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984   She taught me what her uncle once taught her: How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and hammer angled right. The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, Its co-opted and obliterated echo, Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen, Taught […]

Digging BY SEAMUS HEANEY Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through […]