Seamus Heaney Poems

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1.
Blackberry-Picking

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.
...

2.
Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
...

3.
Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
...

4.
Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
...

5.
Twice Shy

Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
...

6.
Requiem For The Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
...

7.
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.
...

8.
Bogland

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
...

9.
Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
...

10.
Clearances

She taught me what her uncle once taught her:
How easily the biggest coal block split
If you got the grain and the hammer angled right.
...

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