Part 1 (1/2)

SEAMUS HEANEY.

Opened Ground.

POEMS 19661996.

for Marie.

Author's Note.

This book contains a greater number of poems than would usually appear in a Selected Poems, fewer than would make up a Collected: it belongs somewhere between the two categories.

I have taken the opportunity to include a very few poems not printed in previous volumes and made a short sequence of extracts from The Cure at Troy (1990), my version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. In similar fas.h.i.+on, 'Sweeney In Flight' is made up of sections from Sweeney Astray (1983), a translation of the medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne, which tells of the penitential life led by Sweeney after he was cursed and turned into a wild flying creature by St Ronan at the Battle of Moira.

Stations was published as a pamphlet by Ulsterman Publications in 1975. The first pieces were written in Berkeley in 1970.

'Station Island' is a sequence of dream encounters set on an island in Co. Donegal where, since medieval times, pilgrims have gone to perform the prescribed penitential exercises (or 'stations').

'Villanelle for an Anniversary' was written to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College in 1636. 'Alphabets' was the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard in 1984.

I have included 'Crediting Poetry' as an Afterword. This seemed to make sense, since the ground covered in the lecture is ground originally opened by the poems which here precede it.

S.H.

Digging.

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 potato drills Where he was digging.

The coa.r.s.e boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By G.o.d, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

Death of a Naturalist.

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart.

Of the townland; green and heavy-headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered in the punis.h.i.+ng sun.

Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.

There were dragonflies, spotted b.u.t.terflies, But best of all was the warm thick s...o...b..r Of frogsp.a.w.n that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window-sills at home, On shelves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogsp.a.w.n. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the gra.s.s the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coa.r.s.e croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a ba.s.s chorus.

Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were c.o.c.ked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the sp.a.w.n would clutch it.

The Barn.

Threshed corn lay piled like grit of ivory.

Or solid as cement in two-lugged sacks.

The musty dark h.o.a.rded an armoury Of farmyard implements, harness, plough-socks.

The floor was mouse-grey, smooth, chilly concrete.