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poetry

D O O R I N T O T H E D A R K

W I N T E R I N G O U T

N O R T H

F I E L D W O R K .

S T A T I O N I S L A N D

S W E E N E Y A S T R A Y

S E L E C T E D P O E M S

T H E H A W L A N T E R N

N E W S E L E C T E D P O E M S 1^66—

T H E C U R E A T T R O Y

S E E I N G T H I N G S

prose

T H E R A T T L E B A G [edited with Ted Hughes)

P R E O C C U P A T I O N S : S E L E C T E D P R O S E 1 9 6 8 - 1 9 7 8

T H E G O V E R N M E N T O F T H E T O N G U E

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S E A M U S H E A N E Y

Death of a Naturalist

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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: M y father, digging. I look down

T i l l his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping i n 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 ta l l tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness i n our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a" spade. Just like his old man.

M y grandfather cut more turf i n a day Than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried h im mi lk i n a bottle Corked sloppily w i t h paper. He straightened up To drink i t , then fell to r i ght away

[ x ]

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 l iv ing roots awaken i n my head.. But I've no spade to fo l low men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I ' l l dig w i th i t .

Death of a Naturalist

A l l 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 i t sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water I n the shade of the banks. Here, every spring, I would f i l l jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window-sills at home, O n shelves at school, and wait and "watch unti l The fattening dots burst into nimble-Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls wou ld tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog. A n d 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 I n rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank W i t h cowdung i n 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 w i t h a bass chorus. Right down the dam, gross-bellied frogs were cocked

[ 3 ]

On sods; their loose necks pulsed l ike sails. Some . hopped:

The slap and plop were obscene threats; Some saf 'Poised like m u d grenades, their blunt heads farting. 1 sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings "Were gathered "there'iof vengeance, "and I knew That i f I dipped my hand the-spawn would clutch i t

[ 4 ]

Follower

M y father worked w i t h a horse-plough, His shoulders globed l ike a fu l l sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

A n expert. He would set the wing And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. The sod rolled over without breaking. A t the headrig, w i t h a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned'round A n d back into the land. His eye Narrowed and angled at the ground,

' Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed' wake, Fell sometimes on the polished sod; Sometimesii£jxxd^-45B©-©H4y5-4ad<,^ ^ Dipping and rising to his plod, fytyfiH

I wanted to grow up and plough, To close one eye, stiffen my arm. A l l I ever did was fol low I n his broad shadow round the farm.

' I was a nuisance, tr ipping, fal l ing, . Yapping always. But today

C' I t is my father who keeps stumbling Behind me, and w i l l not go away.

[ x z ] .

Ancestral Photograph

Jaws puff round and solid as a turnip , Dead eyes are statue's and the upper l ip Bullies the heavy mouth down to a .droop A bowler suggests the stage Irishjnan Whose look has two parts scorn, two parts dead pan. His silver watch chain girds h i m like a hoop.

V M y father's uncle, f rom w h o m he learnt the trade, Long fixed in sepia tints, begins to fade A n d must come down. N o w on the bedroom wal l There is a £a3ed patch where he has been — As i f a bandage had been rippe.d f rom skin — Empty plaque to a house's rise and fa l l .

' T w e n t y years ago I herded cattle . Into^gens or held them against a w a l l \ J n t i l my father w o n at arguing His own price on a crowd of cattlemen W h o handled rumps, groped teats, stood, paused and

then Bought a round of drinks to clinch the bargain.

Uncle and nephew, fifty years ago, ' Heckled and herded through the fair days too. This barrel of a man penned i n the frame: ;

I see h i m w i t h the jaunty hat pushed back . • D r a w thumbs out of his waistcoat, curtly smack.. Hands and sell, ^ a ^ ^ , I've watched you do the same

[ x 3 ]

At a Potato Digging

i

A mechanical digger wrecks the dr i l l , Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould. Labo urers swarm i n behind, stoop to fi l l Wicker creels. Fingers go dead i n the cold.

Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch A higgledy line f rom hedge to headland; Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch A fu l l creel to the pi t and straighten, stand.

Tall for a moment but soon stumble back To fish a- new load f rom the crumbled surf. Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the

black Mother. Processional stooping through the tur f

Recurs mindlessly as autumn. Centuries Of fear and hljma^e to the famine god Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees, Make a seasonal altar of the sod.

I I

Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered like inflated pebbles.. Native to the black hutch of clay

[ 1 8 ]

where the halved seed shot and clotted, these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem the petrified hearts of drills. Split by the spade, they show white as cream.

Good smells exude f rom crumbled earth. The rough bark of humus erupts knots of potatoes (a clean birth) whose solid feel, whose wet insides promise taste of ground and root. To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed.

i l l , -

Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on w i l d higgledy skeletons, scoured the land i n 'forty-five, wolfed the blighted root and died.

The new potato, sound as stone, putrefied when i t had lain three days in the long clay p i t . Mill ions rotted along w i t h i t .

Mouths tightened i n , eyes died hard, faces chilled to a plucked b i rd . In a mil l ion wicker huts, beaks of famine snipped at guts.

A people hungering f rom b i r th , grubbing, like plants, i n the earth,

[ 1 9 ]

were grafted w i t h a great sorrow. Hope rotted like a marrow.

Stinking potatoes fouled the land, pits turned pus into filthy mounds: and where potato diggers are, you still smell the running sore.

i v •

Under a gay flotilla of gulls The rhythm deadens, the workers stop. Brown bread and tea i n bright canfuls Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop

Down in the ditch and take their fill, Thankfully breaking timeless fasts;' Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.

[ z o ]

For the Commander of the Eliza

. . . the others, with emaciated faces and prominent, staring eyeballs, were evidently in an advanced state of starvation. The officer reported to Sir James Dombrain . . . and Sir James, 'very inconveniently', wrote Routh, 'interfered',

C E C I L W O O D H A M - S M I T H : T H E G R E A T H U N G E R

Routine patrol off West Mayo ; sighting A rowboat heading unusually far Beyond the creek, I tacked and hailed the crew I n Gaelic. Their stroke had clearly weakened As they pulled to, from guilt or bashfulness I was conjecturing when, O my sweet Christ, We saw piled in the bottom of their craft Six grown men w i t h gaping mouths -an'd eyes Bursting the sockets like spring onions-in drills. Six wrecks of bone and pall id, tautened skin. 'Bia, bia, Bia' . I n whines and snarls their desperation Rose and fell like a flock of starving gulls. We 'd known about the shortage, hut on board They always kept us right w i t h flour and beef So understand my feelings, and the men's, W h o had no mandate to relieve distress Since relief was then available i n Westport — Though clearly these.poor brutes w o u l d never make i t . I had to refuse food: they cursed and howled Like dogs that had been kicked hard i n the privates. When they drove at me w i t h their starboard oar (Risking capsize themselves) I saw they were Violent and without hope. I hoisted A n d cleared off. Less incidents the better.

Trout

Hangs,' a fat gun-barrel, deep under arched bridges or slips like butter down , the tdjjSg^t of the river.

From depths smooth-skinned as plums, his muzzle gets -bnil!s_eve^_ picks off grass-seed and moths that vanish, torpedoed.

Where water unravels over gravel-beds he is fired from the shallows, white belly reporting

flat; darts like a tracer- . bullet back between stones and is never burnt out. A volley of cold ^ f o ^

ramrodding the current.

[z6]

Waterfall

The burn drowns steadily in its own downpour, A helter-skelter of muslin and glass That skids to a halt, crashing up suds.

Simultaneous acceleration • A n d sudden braking; water goes over Like villains dropped screaming to justice.

,̂ jt_ar£p_ears an athletic glacier Hasrearea r7nto reverse: is i l jalkyv^ed up A n d regurgitated through this l ong i&roat .

JMveye.rides over and downwards, falls w i t h H u r t l i n g tons that slabber and spill , Falls, yet records t h e ^ ^ ^ t t thus standing st i l l .

[2.7]