A little bit of Culture...  Poetry from soc.culture.irish

Poetry of Ireland  (Irish poets writing in English)

Posted by wusha
on:    6 October 1999

There are two Mossbawn poems for Mary Heaney (his mother maybe?):

                                                                [see Mossbawn:   2. The Seed Cutters]
 

Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication
for Mary Heaney

1. Sunlight

Poems, 1965- 1975
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988

 

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.


--- The End ---

Questions? Comments? -K. E. Dennis

Poetry of Ireland   (Irish poets writing in English)

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