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.
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.
