PoemPersonal Helicon
Author / PoetSeamus Heaney
Referencefor Michael Longley
TagsDarkness, Memory, Reflection, Wells

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.

Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Region: Eastern Europe
Period: Contemporary
Awards: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, Whitbread Book Award

more poems by Seamus Heaney

Poem NameTopic
Whatever You Say Say NothingConflict, Internment, Journalism
ValedictionAbsence, Emptiness, Love
The OtterIntimacy, Memory, Swimmer
PunishmentAdultery, Bog, Revenge
Death of a NaturalistFlax, Frogs, Spawn
BoglandBog, Depth, History
Blackberry-PickingBlackberries, Decay, Loss
Storm on the IslandFear, Isolation, Nature

all poems by Seamus Heaney

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