Opened Ground Part 1

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 fashion, '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 punishing 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.

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 p.r.o.ngs: 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-s.p.a.ce. 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 l.u.s.t for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots Where briars scratched and wet gra.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.ks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We h.o.a.rded 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, coa.r.s.e-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 b.u.t.termilk 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 b.u.t.ter-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 b.u.t.ter 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.