"heaney" poems
“Oh you’re Irish?” he said.
“Did you learn the language much?” he said.
Honestly, what can I tell him? I was raised in the North - a ****** wasteland for such a naïve question.
Vague memories of fumbled classes where our secret history was ditched just to get straight into the basics (Cad é mar atá tú?)
No – seriously - I was not tied to it – it was anonymous to me at that age.
Forgotten like some distant echo of once visiting Coole House as a child.
Sure, we knew it was “important”, “our national language”, “heritage” etc. and we were warned it was quickly slipping into the drain of Western hegemony.
But it was baffling, unsexy and only the blunt-faced humorless IRA thugs amongst us were in any way keen.
Then it was gone, just like the faded memories of “The Children of Lir” from my primary school.
Looking back I wonder, what was the point?
A half-full measure paying lip service to our identity.
Teachers and headmasters terrified of the grand colonial reveal that the lessons might have hinted at (were they trying to stop us being Provos-in-waiting?).
And all of this against the awful shame of a common tongue that had no foe yet was slowly vanquishing from our shores.
It could have all been so different.
Rather than rushing to get something in our empty skulls, they could have given us a sense of joy, pride & belief in our own culture.
Calling on Yeats, Behan, Heaney and others to drown us in the language of our ancestors.
Telling the stories of old that only the academics & hippies were keeping from us then.
You know, it might kept us all on the same beautifully illuminated page.
We might have been comfortable in our skins and open to others,
not looking deep into our worthlessness and lashing out at them.
Language is being and language is connecting, I’ve learnt.
But that’s not something I got from my secondary school.
June-July 2018
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 6:06 PM UTC
In a building not concrete of origin
Near a forest we used to forage in
In the village we muck and wander
Towards the river over yonder
On the isle of sacred Avalon
There was new ground to tread upon
Amidst the brier, bog and heath
Among the thistle, needles and oak leaf
Round the timber fire we sang
Of lady luck’s mercy and lady love’s pain
We drank a drink of potent potables
Phrases spoken few of which notable
From the lambs leg we feasted
While the mystic death we cheated
Nights never ending and those yet experienced
We roam them on and on, ever-delirious
Jan 2, 2010
Jan 2, 2010 at 7:51 PM UTC
Dear Mr. Heaney
I wish I'd read your poetry
years ago when I was still impressionable and coy and all that jazz.
Now it resounds in my skull, leaving a tingle in my right hand.
My pen is somewhat snug, but a revolver, no.
Ink and shovels aren't far from each other,
so your point is well-taken. In fact, they're co-workers –
Ink's proved itself just as deadly. It slowly ushers men into the earth,
their soil-seat, while the shovel stages the unending play;
the eternal lattice.
The Nobel hung above your head,
the vast array of pins, medals, papers with your name in billowing scarlet.
What a treat. Like the last cupcake in the back of
the refrigerator that had too much chocolate icing and was only
semi-covered in multi-colored snowflakes. I'd loved to have
personally presented it to you. There'd be my own plaque,
billowing scarlet and all. It'd say, "Mr. Heaney,
, you must own a ***** I hope you'd laugh, and not be offended,
thinking me a distasteful and insensitive lout. It may not be right,
but I can't help but steal the volumes surrounding yours out of
every **** library so
"Seamus Heaney"
may catch the eye of the common passerby
more easily. I think I even went to work on
enhancing a spine with a red sharpie once.
Red hits the eye hard.
That was in the central library downtown.
Don't tell anyone.
Beyond a laugh, what I hope for most is that you get this letter.
Just look at it.
Wonder why someone so far removed in age and culture and place
would ever think of you holding an over-frosted desert as glorious.
Sep 2, 2012
Sep 2, 2012 at 7:50 PM UTC
The Harvest Bow
As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.
Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game *****
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,
And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall—
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,
Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.
The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser—
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.
by Seamus Heaney
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 8:02 PM UTC
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Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk.
Dec 9, 2009
Dec 9, 2009 at 7:29 AM UTC
Words Heavy (Kiss Bukowski)
Drinking White Russians with Black Kenyans,
not joking you I was just in Ethiopia,
this it not a Haiku or a Love Poem,
this is gifted insanity like Jim Morrison,
no jealousy I’m already Seamus Heaney,
isn’t it ironic how we can be both depressed and happy,
like a ghost that won’t leave earth,
or a Self that’s over the hill but still tries to write ****
oh that’s touching,
like John Updike meeting E.E. Cummings,
not gay no way,
but I’d still kiss Charles Bukowski,
no bukkaki though,
because I’m a Simple Man and rather than,
bukkaki I’d probably like to make Love One on One,
I guess I’m New School and Old Fashion,
flirting with Death like I’ve already got my chips cashed in,
Life a Trip and can be a B!tch it depends on how you’re acting,
as an overwhelming sense of anxiety creeps into me,
like being Maya Angelou performing a show for the ****
a Civil Rights Superhero,
that makes Her point without any lustful thoughts of revenge,
presence light as a snowflake,
words heavy as the weight of the world on her back as it bends,
words heavy as the weight of the world on my will as it bends,
all the white watching my own show from the front row,
drinking White Russians with Black Kenyans,
joking I’m not joking,
I was just in Ethiopia,
this it not a Haiku or a Love Poem,
this is gifted insanity like Jim Morrison…
∆ Aaron LA Lux ∆
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 7:57 PM UTC
The year I would turn nine
Charlie Kelly threw his pint over Paul Brennan
in the opening scenes of a new Irish drama
called Fair City. The 25th Dáil was dissolved.
Ireland got its 1st lotto millionaire.
There was talk of mining for gold in Mayo
and Christy O’Connor Jnr
won the Ryder Cup for Europe.
(Years later playing Trivial Pursuit
one of the questions wanted to know:
what profession gets the Ryder Cup? —
a cousin from Carlow answered; prostitutes.)
I was growing through 3rd class
St. Brendan’s National School; Loughrea —
on the other side of Tiananmen Square
another student stood up
as the Guildford Four walked free
after 14 years innocently incarcerated.
While in Germany, a wall
that had been built to divide: separate, fell.
Pushed over by people. While Hungry, Poland
and Czechoslovakia: all said: enough.
The Russians left Afghanistan and in South Africa
Apartheid began to crumble. Pity
it was allowed to even begin.
Iran was ****** off about some book
and on Christmas Day in Romania
Mr and Mrs Ceausescu were executed.
In 1989, the Church of Ireland allowed female priests.
96 people died at Hillsborough.
Haughey was Taoiseach,
Mr. Heaney was conferred
as Professor of Poetry at Oxford
and we qualified for Italia 90.
I was 9 and the only thing I remember
about that year; I fell out of a tree
and broke my arm.
Nov 7, 2010
Nov 7, 2010 at 11:53 AM UTC
My books are piled in the Hallway,
The Girlfriend wants me out,
She can keep all the household cargo
the insecurities and doubt.
I don't care much for chrome Toasters
Just give me my Damon Runyon,
Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway,
Jack Kerouac and Jack London.
Albert Camus, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh
Mayakovsky and Roger McGough,
the Steamer, bread -maker, Asparagus- spearer
Are all yours, I'm ******* off.
Just give me a dozen or so boxes,
Not those ***** looks,
Your welcome to the giant fridge-freezer,
All I want, are my books
Jan 24, 2016
Jan 24, 2016 at 3:52 PM UTC
How I long to grasp at Heaney's squat pen
Instead of flying lightning fingertips
Across a headache-bright square.
A flare of brilliance
Is better captured the old way,
But there would have to be a transfer,
Which would lead to hesitation
Then deletion,
(Plus there's too much guilt about trees,
And I can never find a pen).
Heaney hesitated, too
And dwelt on digging,
Before acceptance, and resolve.
My fingers flutter over letters, seeking my own answer,
Determined to dig myself
Out of this hole.
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 4:29 PM UTC
It is an ancient Poet
and he stoppeth me.
“Beware of poetry, my son,
She’s a gold digger.
She’ll chew you up and spit you out,
leave you penniless and lying in a gutter,
drunk on absinthe,
while the rich novelists and scriptwriters
step over you, laughing.”
“Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon!”
Unheeding, I slunk off to my garret
to compose a villanelle,
heavily derivative of Dylan Thomas.
I only wanted to get girls,
but before I knew it
I was roaming with the Romantics,
bopping with the Beats
and cruising with the Classicists.
Popping some Pope, shooting some Stevie Smith
or hitting up Heaney,
I was hopelessly addicted.
And I never did get the girl.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 2:44 AM UTC
folding the pages to an escape
consume the clarity
worth the calories?
cut cut cut
you ate. You stupid *****
the edible woman.
girl, interrupted.
my eyes track along the shapes of my sanctity
a little train to my escape
i run as fast as my eyes can carry me.
isolated in my alphabets
my bell jar.
the Grecian shapes have fenced around me
but I'm snug as a gun.
and i cannot force myself to my own conceit.
Seamus Heaney
Shakespeare
my true friends.
listen to me. Speak to me
through their squiggles and stories.
who don't ask me to eat.
Dec 26, 2013
Dec 26, 2013 at 7:11 AM UTC
— for Seamus Heaney
Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 5:01 PM UTC
It's a fault with double glazing,
everything outside the window
is inaudible.
When mute pine cones fall on
corrugated roofs, upset dogs
mime angrily in silence.
Or when the heavens open, and
the earth is being doused with
those liquid all sorts, in Ireland,
Yes Ireland, where holding up
umbrellas inside a house brings
bad luck, Heaney used a rain stick.
May 15, 2019
May 15, 2019 at 2:30 AM UTC
The last drop of morning
dew has kissed the ground.
Scattered leaves remind the spring
of rites in changing the
seasons of life and beginning—
in Heaney's words, "begin again."
We begin to gain white
hairs in the cycle of
hours; ours not even enough
to live the gain. But
again, we begin. Why are
we here? People change
because changes change people.
Oct 3, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 at 10:50 AM UTC
— for Seamus Heaney
Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 12:10 PM UTC
Glenshane Pass separated you both.
23 miles away in the same time, same place as my father’s childhood.
So when you talked of your da digging Toner’s bog and waxed lyrical about sheughs, I knew in our English class what exactly you were saying (when others didn’t).
Your words float over time & space to me now.
A celebration of the intimacy of our homelands.
A holy adoration of long gone voices that still resonate.
You never strayed, never.
It was always in your heart, always:
the land, the forgotten lanes, the broad fields, the lost language of it all.
I keep a certain comfort now with your lines as I Iay in my southerly home,
knowing that I am forever tithed to the townlands of our shared ancestry.
I thank you.
May your words stay alive as song as Ireland still has its beauty
and may their illumination still shine on us all.
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 5:46 PM UTC
— for Seamus Heaney
Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM UTC
There is nothing more than composing
sonnets and blank verse,
like Larkin and Heaney never willingly leaving home,
seeing character and landscape grow:
no television, by view of partition
a barbed wire sandwich
a calculated drip feed reaction.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 6:52 PM UTC
Heaney has died; between
his finger and
his thumb:
"I"
Oct 5, 2013
Oct 5, 2013 at 1:34 PM UTC
Why write a poem?
Write a tweet instead.
Goes the internal monologue running in my head.
Why write a poem?
Go and do some work.
Getting out the fountain pen is an excuse to shirk.
Why write a poem?
Nobody cares.
Spend your time on snapchat racking up the 'flares'.
Why write a poem?
Heaney's been dead for years.
Can't read Mid Term Break without it reducing me to tears.
Dec 3, 2017
Dec 3, 2017 at 3:18 AM UTC
"That's something poetry can do for you, it can entrance you for a moment above the pool of your own consciousness and your own possibilities."
Seamus Heaney
it is not enough
the eyes, the ears,
the ebb and flow
of calcium in bones
of iron in stars
sometimes silence pours down
like a blessing
some left their offices
and they're now deciphering
the eyes of thunder
some inner power turns me around:
the tribes of air
the shapes of a child's wonder
the involuntary rehearsal of words
this passivity of language
like jazz phrases
the wrinkles of that woman
imprinted in my heart
(by her murderous fingers)
spring gives me rose-like mornings
(because of my bedroom curtains)
and there is something else
this feeling of oneness
the cedar and the flowering river
motherly care, exhaustion, or not knowing
and the hues of morning skies
countless fleeting little gestures
and the cries of birds
tearing solitudes
my complete abandonment to him
in the sea of time
I let the window open
every day is a declaration of love
even when I hate
the dance with the unknown
the inextricable
the polyphony of laughter
and darkness
you live in me during the day
and I **** your name each night
anew
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 5:16 PM UTC
( for Seamus Heaney)
as if the pale stones
share the warmth
between two sides
sea and field cut
early light and fallen morning
the path weathered and slow.
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 5:37 AM UTC
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 7:00 PM UTC
— for Seamus Heaney
Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 6:17 PM UTC