from Mossbawn

  

  

For Mary Heaney

 

 Sunlight 

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.

Seamus Heaney

 
From "North"

Notice the objects named in this poem:

Pump, bucket, water, griddle, wall, bakeboard, stove, apron, window, goose-wing, nails, shins, two clocks, scoop, meal-bin.

And the two phrases:

"Here is a space", and "here is love."

The way Heaney shows that each object is worked upon by something else. The sun heats the iron of the pump, the water honeys in the bucket, the sun heats the wall.

And she is like this. She works upon the things she touches. She changes things. Warms them, moves them, works them, touches them.

And Time works and moves as well. 

This "sunlit absence", this woman, this remembered warmth of love -

so beautiful.

Oysters

Hans Iten

Oysters     Our shells clacked on the plates. My tongue was a filling estuary, My palate hung with starlight: As I tasted the salty Pleiades Orion dipped his foot into the water. Alive and violated, They lay on their beds of ice: Bivalves: the split bulb And philandering sigh of ocean. Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered. We had driven to that coast Through flowers and limestone And there we were, toasting friendship, Laying down a perfect memory In the cool of thatch and crockery. Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow, The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome: I saw damp panniers disgorge The frond-lipped, brine-stung Glut of privilege. And was angry that my trust could not repose In the clear light, like poetry or freedom Leaning in from sea. I ate the day Deliberately, that its tang Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.     Seamus Heaney      Reading this poem I find myself trying to add up the words as if their total will be equal to the meaning.     But it doesn't work.   I start again. This time I envision the images. The sound of the shells hitting the plate, the water reflecting the stars, the constellations - and the poet feeling as if he is tasting all those. Then the image of millions of oyster shells opened up and discarded on a beach. A sense of futility, of desolation. Seamus driving through the countryside, and spending time with friends in a stone cottage, thinking as he does this about the distant past, the Romans transporting their loads of oysters across the mountains to wealthy buyers in Rome. (Is this a comment about how beauty has been sold like a product?) And then the last stanza - "I was angry that my trust could not repose in the clear light..." - what does that mean? Is it that he wants to be fully honest and open, but cannot trust how that would be received or used?  And - "I ate the day." Wonderful! First he eats the oyster, and it opens a crack in history and friendship and the desire to be fully open to others - and now, 'eating the day', he overrides his anger at not being able to trust truth to words, by turning himself from words into verbs - that is, action.    Words alive in gesture and motion.  Words speaking through his entire body, his life.   I don't know if that's what the poem is about, but I might be closer to it.

Old Smoothing Iron

Edgar Degas

Old Smoothing Iron

Often I watched her lift it

from where its compact wedge

rode the back of the stove

like a tug at anchor.

To test its heat by ear

she spat in its iron face

or held it up next her cheek

to divine the stored danger.

Soft thumps on the ironing board.

Her dimpled angled elbow

and intent stoop

as she aimed the smoothing iron

like a plane into linen

like the resentment of women

To work, her dumb lunge says,

is to move a certain mass

through a certain distance,

is to pull your weight and feel

exact and equal to it.

Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.

Seamus Heaney


Seamus, Seamus, your poems fill me with such affection. Who is this woman you observed at her work? A mother, a sister, a wife? It doesn't matter who, I suppose. What does matter is that you saw it, and it stayed with you. Here's a woman working - and you are not insensitive to what that work demands. 

 

I like that "the resentment of women", it's so true, in household work there is a tinge (and sometimes more), an undercurrent of self-sacrifice. It's personal work, after all, for people who often need more than one can give. And yet, it's personal work, the work at the heart of the universe, the work that takes the most, the work that Seamus shows has gravity, but in it's own peculiar way, elevates. 

 

That last line is remarkable - "To work...is to pull your weight and feel exact and equal to it. Feel dragged upon. And buoyant." Words to think on.






 

The Forge

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, "Forging the Anchor"

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.

Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;

Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,

Set there immoveable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter

Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;

Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick

To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

Seamus Heaney

One of the most arresting first lines. It has dug its way into my head. This is another poem that is a kind of self-portrait - this time of a poet and his work. That "All I know is a door into the dark." so perfectly describes the step of faith a writer takes when he picks up a pen. The tools of the blacksmith's trade, the hammer and anvil "an altar/Where he expends himself in shape and music", is so much what he does, hammering out the thoughts on the page till they have a form and a rhythm. I love how Heaney sees writing as physical, gritty hard labour. His poem about digging is similar. For him, poetry is not a higher plane, it's a getting down to earth, an elemental, age-old craft that is useful and necessary to everyday life. Writing is "To beat real iron out, to work the bellows." I love this poem, both sides of it - the description of the blacksmith at work in his forge, a dying art, and the inner poem that shows the drive and commitment to creation that a poet must sweat and hammer out in words.

 

The Otter

Martine Emdur

The Otter

When you plunged

The light of Tuscany wavered

And swung through the pool

From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,

Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders

Surfacing and surfacing again

This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.

You were beyond me.

The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air

Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,

When I hold you now

We are close and deep

As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.

You are my palpable, lithe

Otter of memory

In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,

Each silent, thigh-shaking kick

Re-tilting the light,

Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,

Back again, intent as ever,

Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,

Printing the stones. 

Seamus Heaney 

I live this poem every time I take my son to the pool. He is so happy in the water, watching him jump off the diving board, pick objects up off the bottom of the pool with his teeth, and wave to me underwater - its sheer joy. Seeing him so comfortable and playful in an element that for me is not so easy - he too is beyond me.

Drifting Off

Colin See-Paynton "Round of Wren"

Drifting Off

The guttersnipe and the albatross

gliding for days without a single wingbeat

were equally beyond me.

I yearned for the gannet's strike,

the unbegrudging concentration 

of the heron.

In the camaraderie of rookeries,

in the spiteful vigilance of colonies 

I was at home.

I learned to distrust
 the allure of the cuckoo

and the gossip of starlings,

kept faith with doughty bullfinches,

leveled my wit too often

to the small-minded wren

and too often caved in

to the pathos of waterhens

and panicky corncrakes.

I gave too much credence to stragglers,

overrated the composure of blackbirds

and the folklore of magpies.

But when goldfinch or kingfisher rent

the veil of the usual,

pinions whispered and braced

as I stooped, unwieldy

and brimming,

my spurs at the ready.

Seamus Heaney 

I wonder if this could be called a self-portrait too. We had Robert Graves describe his face, Arthur Rimbaud ascribe different characters to himself, and Heaney now, seems to be telling us his place in the world by means of birds. He's not a lone flyer or patient hunter, he likes the comaraderie of colonies, he's made some mistakes of judgment, fell for a good sad story or two, believed a little too much in some characters, but when the moment came - he was ready. Ready for what? Attack? Defense? What bird is he? He doesn't say. All this makes me smile.