Chapter One FROM Death of a Naturalist [1966] 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 coarse 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 God, 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 punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn 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 Frogspawn. 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 grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mint 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 spawn would clutch it. The Barn Threshed corn lay piled like grit of ivory Or solid as cement in two-lugged sacks. The musky dark hoarded an armoury Of farmyard implements, harness, plough-socks. The floor was mouse-grey, smooth, chilly concrete. There were no windows, just two narrow shafts Of gilded motes, crossing, from air-holes slit High in each gable. The one door meant no draughts All summer when the zinc burned like an oven. A scythe's edge, a clean spade, a pitchfork's prongs: Slowly bright objects formed when you went in. Then you felt cobwebs clogging up your lungs And scuttled fast into the sunlit yard-- And into nights when bats were on the wing Over the rafters of sleep, where bright eyes stared From piles of grain in corners, fierce, unblinking. The dark gulfed like a roof-space. I was chaff To be pecked up when birds shot through the air-slits. I lay face-down to shun the fear above. The two-lugged sacks moved in like great blind rats. Blackberry-Picking for Philip Hobsbaum Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked tip and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. Churning Day A thick crust, coarse-grained as limestone rough-cast, hardened gradually on top of the four crocks that stood, large pottery bombs, in the small pantry. After the hot brewery of gland, cud and udder, cool porous earthenware fermented the butter milk for churning day, when the hooped churn was scoured with plumping kettles and the busy scrubber echoed daintily on the seasoned wood. It stood then, purified, on the flagged kitchen floor. Out came the four crocks, spilled their heavy lip of cream, their white insides, into the sterile churn. The staff, like a great whiskey muddler fashioned in deal wood, was plunged in, the lid fitted. My mother took first turn, set up rhythms that, slugged and thumped for hours. Arms ached. Hands blistered. Cheeks and clothes were spattered with flabby milk. Where finally gold flecks began to dance. They poured hot water then, sterilized a birchwood bowl and little corrugated butter-spades. Their short stroke quickened, suddenly a yellow curd was weighting the churned-up white, heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight that they fished, dripping, in a wide tin strainer, heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl. The house would stink long after churning day, acrid as a sulphur mine. The empty crocks were ranged along the wall again, the butter in soft printed slabs was piled on pantry shelves. And in the house we moved with gravid ease, our brains turned crystals full of clean deal churns, the plash and gurgle of the sour-breathed milk, the pat and slap of small spades on wet lumps. Follower My father worked with a horse-plough, His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horses 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 hobnailed 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. Mid-Term Break I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two 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 embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were `sorry for my trouble'. Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock 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 the four-foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four-foot box, a foot for every year. The Diviner Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick That he held tight by the arms of the V: Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck Of water, nervous, but professionally Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting. The rod jerked with precise convulsions. Spring water suddenly broadcasting Through a green hazel its secret stations. The bystanders would ask to have a try. He handed them the rod without a word. It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly, He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred. Poem for Marie Love, I shall perfect for you the child Who diligently potters in my brain Digging with heavy spade till sods were piled Or puddling through muck in a deep drain. Yearly I would sow my yard-long garden. I'd strip a layer of sods to build the wall That was to keep out sow and pecking hen. Yearly, admitting these, the sods would fall. Or in the sucking clabber I would splash Delightedly and dam the flowing drain But always my bastions of clay and mush Would burst before the rising autumn rain. Love, you shall perfect for me this child Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking: Within new limits now, arrange the world And square the circle: four walls and a ring. Personal Helicon for Micheal Longley As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. I savoured the rich crash when a bucket Plummeted down at the end of a rope. So deep you saw no reflection in it. A shallow one under a dry stone ditch Fructified like any aquarium. When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch A white face hovered over the bottom. Others had echoes, gave back your own call With a clean new music in it. And one Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection. Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme To see myself, to set the darkness echoing. Antaeus When I lie on the ground I rise flushed as a rose in the morning. In fights I arrange a fall on the ring To rub myself with sand That is operative As an elixir. I cannot be weaned Off the earth's long contour, her river-veins. Down here in my cave Girdered with root and rock I am cradled in the dark that wombed me And nurtured in every artery Like a small hillock. Let each new hero come, Seeking the golden apples and Atlas: He must wrestle with me before he pass Into that realm of fame Among sky-born and royal. He may well throw me and renew my birth But let him not plan, lifting me off the earth, My elevation, my fall. Copyright © 1998 Seamus Heaney. All rights reserved.
