BS: Heaney all day

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 04:51 AM

Another poem by Heaney, Digging.

Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests: snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping soundWhen the spade sinks into gravelly ground:My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbedsBends low, comes up twenty years awayStooping in rhythm through potato drillsWhere he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaftAgainst the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we pickedLoving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God the old man could handle a spade.Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner's bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I'll dig with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: ard mhacha
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 04:33 AM

Poor Gillian,you don`t have to be a professor to see the genius in the man, over rated?, God help your wit.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 04:16 AM

And one more: Mid-Term Break, about the death of his brother:

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At ten o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrased
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble';
Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'closk the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple.
He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 06:02 PM

Jaysus, Rightly won, that Nobel.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:36 PM

Here's another, which he's just been reading. He takes off from the image of the bog body in PV Glob's book Bog People - a woman that Glob conjectured had been executed for adultery - and brings it back to another kind of adultery: the Northern Ireland girls from nationalist communities who had their heads shaved and tarred and were left tied to railings because they were the lovers of British soldiers, and so seen as traitors holding a threat of informing:

        
Punishment
        
I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love.
Little adultress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:22 PM

Thanks for the link. I've not read his stuff before. Am enjoying listening.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:17 PM

Doubt it. Just a
Nobel Prize winning poet

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:12 PM

Is he a relative of Joe Heaney's?

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:47 PM

And another - his poem Clonmacnoise:

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'

The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:41 PM

Requiem for the Croppies
        
        The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: GUEST,Gillian
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:32 PM

Over rated and put anyone to sleep.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:21 PM

Weirdly, it seems to have stopped and been replaced with yowling and yodelling, as of 9pm or so (Irish time), both on RTE Radio 1 Extra and RTE Radio 1 on long wave.

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 04:14 PM

Happy birthday to He
Happy birthday to He
Happy birthday to Heaney
Happy birthday to He

Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day
From: Leadfingers
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 03:13 PM

Its his 70th Birthday !

Subject: BS: Heaney all day
From: Thompson
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 02:48 PM

Seamus Heaney is reading his entire output of poetry today on
RTE Radio 1 Extra