New Selected Poems (1988-2013)

by Seamus Heaney

  In the end each clan on the outlying coasts

  beyond the whale-road had to yield to him

  and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

  Afterwards a boy-child was born to Shield,

  a cub in the yard, a comfort sent

  by God to that nation. He knew what they had tholed,

  the long times and troubles they’d come through

  without a leader; so the Lord of Life,

  the glorious Almighty, made this man renowned.

  Shield had fathered a famous son:

  Beow’s name was known through the north.

  And a young prince must be prudent like that,

  giving freely while his father lives

  so that afterwards in age when fighting starts

  steadfast companions will stand by him

  and hold the line. Behaviour that’s admired

  is the path to power among people everywhere.

  Shield was still thriving when his time came

  and he crossed over into the Lord’s keeping.

  His warrior band did what he bade them

  when he laid down the law among the Danes:

  they shouldered him out to the sea’s flood,

  the chief they revered who had long ruled them.

  A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,

  ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.

  They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,

  laid out by the mast, amidships,

  the great ring-giver. Far-fetched treasures

  were piled upon him, and precious gear.

  I never heard before of a ship so well furbished

  with battle-tackle, bladed weapons

  and coats of mail. The massed treasure

  was loaded on top of him: it would travel far

  on out into the ocean’s sway.

  They decked his body no less bountifully

  with offerings than those first ones did

  who cast him away when he was a child

  and launched him alone out over the waves.

  And they set a gold standard up

  high above his head and let him drift

  to wind and tide, bewailing him

  and mourning their loss. No man can tell,

  no wise man in hall or weathered veteran

  knows for certain who salvaged that load.

  Then it fell to Beow to keep the forts.

  He was well regarded and ruled the Danes

  for a long time after his father took leave

  of his life on earth. And then his heir,

  the great Halfdane, held sway

  for as long as he lived, their elder and warlord.

  He was four times a father, this fighter prince:

  one by one they entered the world,

  Heorogar, Hrothgar, the good Halga

  and a daughter, I have heard, who was Onela’s queen,

  a balm in bed for the battle-scarred Swede.

  The fortunes of war favoured Hrothgar.

  Friends and kinsmen flocked to his ranks,

  young followers, a force that grew

  to a mighty army. So his mind turned

  to hall-building: he handed down orders

  for men to work on a great mead-hall

  meant to be a wonder of the world for ever;

  it would be his throne-room and there he would dispense

  his God-given goods to young and old –

  but not the common land or people’s lives.

  Far and wide through the world, I have heard,

  orders for work to adorn that wallstead

  were sent to many peoples. And soon it stood there,

  finished and ready, in full view,

  the hall of halls. Heorot was the name

  he had settled on it, whose utterance was law.

  Nor did he renege, but doled out rings

  and torques at the table. The hall towered,

  its gables wide and high and awaiting

  a barbarous burning. That doom abided,

  but in time it would come: the killer instinct

  unleashed among in-laws, the blood-lust rampant.

  Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,

  nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him

  to hear the din of the loud banquet

  every day in the hall, the harp being struck

  and the clear song of a skilled poet

  telling with mastery of man’s beginnings,

  how the Almighty had made the earth

  a gleaming plain girdled with waters;

  in His splendour He set the sun and the moon

  to be earth’s lamplight, lanterns for men,

  and filled the broad lap of the world

  with branches and leaves; and quickened life

  in every other thing that moved.

  So times were pleasant for the people there

  until finally one, a fiend out of hell,

  began to work his evil in the world.

  Grendel was the name of this grim demon

  haunting the marches, marauding round the heath

  and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time

  in misery among the banished monsters,

  Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed

  and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel

  the Eternal Lord had exacted a price:

  Cain got no good from committing that murder

  because the Almighty made him anathema

  and out of the curse of his exile there sprang

  ogres and elves and evil phantoms

  and the giants too who strove with God

  time and again until He gave them their reward.

  So, after nightfall, Grendel set out

  for the lofty house, to see how the Ring-Danes

  were settling into it after their drink,

  and there he came upon them, a company of the best

  asleep from their feasting, insensible to pain

  and human sorrow. Suddenly then

  the God-cursed brute was creating havoc:

  greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men

  from their resting places and rushed to his lair,

  flushed up and inflamed from the raid,

  blundering back with the butchered corpses.

  Then as dawn brightened and the day broke

  Grendel’s powers of destruction were plain:

  their wassail was over, they wept to heaven

  and mourned under morning. Their mighty prince,

  the storied leader, sat stricken and helpless,

  humiliated by the loss of his guard,

  bewildered and stunned, staring aghast

  at the demon’s trail, in deep distress.

  He was numb with grief, but got no respite

  for one night later merciless Grendel

  struck again with more gruesome murders.

  Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse.

  It was easy then to meet with a man

  shifting himself to a safer distance

  to bed in the bothies, for who could be blind

  to the evidence of his eyes, the obviousness

  of that hall-watcher’s hate? Whoever escaped

  kept a weather-eye open and moved away.

  So Grendel ruled in defiance of right,

  one against all, until the greatest house

  in the world stood empty, a deserted wallstead.

  For twelve winters, seasons of woe,

  the lord of the Shieldings suffered under

  his load of sorrow; and so, before long,

  the news was known over the whole world.

  Sad lays were sung about the beset king,

  the vicious raids and ravages of Grendel,

  his long and unrelenting feud,

  nothing but war; how he would never

  parley or make peace with any Dane

  nor stop his death-dealing
nor pay the death-price.

  No counsellor could ever expect

  fair reparation from those rabid hands.

  All were endangered; young and old

  were hunted down by that dark death-shadow

  who lurked and swooped in the long nights

  on the misty moors; nobody knows

  where these reavers from hell roam on their errands.

  [lines 3137–3182]

  The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf,

  stacked and decked it until it stood foursquare,

  hung with helmets, heavy war-shields

  and shining armour, just as he had ordered.

  Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it,

  mourning a lord far-famed and beloved.

  On a height they kindled the hugest of all

  funeral fires; fumes of woodsmoke

  billowed darkly up, the blaze roared

  and drowned out their weeping, wind died down

  and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house,

  burning it to the core. They were disconsolate

  and wailed aloud for their lord’s decease.

  A Geat woman too sang out in grief;

  with hair bound up, she unburdened herself

  of her worst fears, a wild litany

  of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,

  enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles,

  slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.

  Then the Geat people began to construct

  a mound on a headland, high and imposing,

  a marker that sailors could see from afar,

  and in ten days they had done the work.

  It was their hero’s memorial; what remained from the fire

  they housed inside it, behind a wall

  as worthy of him as their workmanship could make it.

  And they buried torques in the barrow, and jewels

  and a trove of such things as trespassing men

  had once dared to drag from the hoard.

  They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure,

  gold under gravel, gone to earth,

  as useless to men now as it ever was.

  Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb,

  chieftains’ sons, champions in battle,

  all of them distraught, chanting in dirges,

  mourning his loss as a man and a king.

  They extolled his heroic nature and exploits

  and gave thanks for his greatness; which was the proper thing

  for a man should praise a prince whom he holds dear

  and cherish his memory when that moment comes

  when he has to be convoyed from his bodily home.

  So the Geat people, his hearth-companions,

  sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low.

  They said that of all the kings upon the earth

  he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,

  kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.

  Perch

  Perch on their water-perch hung in the clear Bann River

  Near the clay bank in alder-dapple and waver,

  Perch we called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs, runty and ready,

  I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body

  That is passable through, but they’re bluntly holding the pass,

  Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze,

  Guzzling the current, against it, all muscle and slur

  In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air

  That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold

  In the everything flows and steady go of the world.

  Lupins

  They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing.

  In waiting. Unavailable. But there

  For sure. Sure and unbending.

  Rose-fingered dawn’s and navy midnight’s flower.

  Seed packets to begin with, pink and azure,

  Sifting lightness and small jittery promise:

  Lupin spires, erotics of the future,

  Lip-brush of the blue and earth’s deep purchase.

  O pastel turrets, pods and tapering stalks

  That stood their ground for all our summer wending

  And even when they blanched would never balk.

  And none of this surpassed our understanding.

  from Out of the Bag

  1

  All of us came in Doctor Kerlin’s bag.

  He’d arrive with it, disappear to the room

  And by the time he’d reappear to wash

  Those nosy, rosy, big, soft hands of his

  In the scullery basin, its lined insides

  (The colour of a spaniel’s inside lug)

  Were empty for all to see, the trap-sprung mouth

  Unsnibbed and gaping wide. Then like a hypnotist

  Unwinding us, he’d wind the instruments

  Back into their lining, tie the cloth

  Like an apron round itself,

  Darken the door and leave

  With the bag in his hand, a plump ark by the keel …

  Until the next time came and in he’d come

  In his fur-lined collar that was also spaniel-coloured

  And go stooping up to the room again, a whiff

  Of disinfectant, a Dutch interior gleam

  Of waistcoat satin and highlights on the forceps.

  Getting the water ready, that was next –

  Not plumping hot, and not lukewarm, but soft,

  Sud-luscious, saved for him from the rain-butt

  And savoured by him afterwards, all thanks

  Denied as he towelled hard and fast,

  Then held his arms out suddenly behind him

  To be squired and silk-lined into the camel coat.

  At which point he once turned his eyes upon me,

  Hyperborean, beyond-the-north-wind blue,

  Two peepholes to the locked room I saw into

  Every time his name was mentioned, skimmed

  Milk and ice, swabbed porcelain, the white

  And chill of tiles, steel hooks, chrome surgery tools

  And blood dreeps in the sawdust where it thickened

  At the foot of each cold wall. And overhead

  The little, pendent, teat-hued infant parts

  Strung neatly from a line up near the ceiling –

  A toe, a foot and shin, an arm, a cock

  A bit like the rosebud in his buttonhole.

  4

  The room I came from and the rest of us all came from

  Stays pure reality where I stand alone,

  Standing the passage of time, and she’s asleep

  In sheets put on for the doctor, wedding presents

  That showed up again and again, bridal

  And usual and useful at births and deaths.

  Me at the bedside, incubating for real,

  Peering, appearing to her as she closes

  And opens her eyes, then lapses back

  Into a faraway smile whose precinct of vision

  I would enter every time, to assist and be asked

  In that hoarsened whisper of triumph,

  ‘And what do you think

  Of the new wee baby the doctor brought for us all

  When I was asleep?’

  The Little Canticles of Asturias

  1

  And then at midnight as we started to descend

  Into the burning valley of Gijon,

  Into its blacks and crimsons, in medias res,

  It was as if my own face burned again

  In front of the fanned-up lip and crimson maw

  Of a pile of newspapers lit long ago

  One windy evening, breaking off and away

  In flame-posies, small airborne fire-ships

  Endangering the house-thatch and the stacks –

  For we almost panicked there in the epic blaze

  Of those furnaces and hot refineries

 
Where the night-shift worked on in their element

  And we lost all hope of reading the map right

  And gathered speed and cursed the hellish roads.

  2

  Next morning on the way to Piedras Blancas

  I felt like a soul being prayed for.

  I saw men cutting aftergrass with scythes,

  Beehives in clover, a windlass and a shrine,

  The maize like golden cargo in its hampers.

  I was a pilgrim new upon the scene

  Yet entering it as if it were home ground,

  The Gaeltacht, say, in the nineteen-fifties,

  Where I was welcome, but of small concern

  To families at work in the roadside fields

  Who’d watch and wave at me from their other world

  As was the custom still near Piedras Blancas.

  3

  At San Juan de las Harenas

  It was a bright day of the body.

  Two rivers flowed together under sunlight.

  Watercourses scored the level sand.

  The sea hushed and glittered outside the bar.

  And in the afternoon, gulls in excelsis

  Bobbed and flashed on air like altar boys

  With their quick turns and tapers and responses

  In the great re-echoing cathedral gloom

  Of distant Compostela, stela, stela.

  Ballynahinch Lake

  Godi, fanciullo mio; stato soave,

  Stagion lieta è cotesta.

  LEOPARDI, ‘II Sabato del Villaggio’

  for Eamon Grennan

  So we stopped and parked in the spring-cleaning light

  Of Connemara on a Sunday morning

  As a captivating brightness held and opened

  And the utter mountain mirrored in the lake

  Entered us like a wedge knocked sweetly home

  Into core timber.

  Not too far away

  But far enough for their rumpus not to carry,

  A pair of waterbirds splashed up and down

  And on and on. Next thing their strong white flex