Heaney - Human chain

Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled until the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an electric fence: Had I not been awake I would have missed it, It came and went so unexpectedly And almost it seemed dangerously, Returning like an animal to the house, A courier blast that there and then Lapsed ordinary. But not ever After. And not now.

Now the oil-fired heating boiler comes to life Abruptly, drowsily, like the timed collapse Of a sawn down tree, I imagine them In summer season, as it must have been, And the place, it dawns on me, Could have been Grove Hill before the oaks were cut, Where Id often stand with them on airy Sundays Shin-deep in hilltop bluebells, looking out At Magherafelts four spires in the distance.

Too late, alas, now for the apt quotation About a love thats proved by steady gazing Not at each other but in the same direction.

Quercus, the oak. And Quaerite, Seek ye. Among green leaves and acorns in mosaic (Our college arms surmounted by columba, Dove of the church, of Derrys sainted grove) The footworn motto stayed indelible: Seek ye first the Kingdom Fair and square I stood on in the Junior House hallway A grey eye will look back Seeing them as a couple, I now see, For the first time, all the more together For having had to turn and walk away, as close In the leaving (or closer) as in the getting. Its winter at the seaside where theyve gone For the wedding meal. And I am at the table, Uninvited, ineluctable.

A skirl of gulls. A smell of cooking fish. Plump dormant silver. Stranded silence. Tears. Their bibbed waitress unlids a clinking dish And leaves them to it, under chandeliers.

And to all the anniversaries of this They are not ever going to observe Or mention even in the years to come. And now the man who drove them here will drive Them back, and by evening well be home.

Were I to have embraced him anywhere It would have been on the riverbank That summer before college, him in his prime, Me at the time not thinking how he must Keep coming with me because Id soon be leaving. That should have been the first, but it didnt happen. The second did, at New Ferry one night When he was very drunk and needed help To do up trouser buttons. It took a grandson to do it properly, To rush him in the armchair With a snatch raid on his neck, Proving him thus vulnerable to delight, Coming as great proofs often come Of a sudden, one-off, then the steady dawning Of whatever erat demonstrandum. It took a grandson to do it properly, To rush him in the armchair With a snatch raid on his neck, Proving him thus vulnerable to delight, Coming as great proofs often come Of a sudden, one-off, then the steady dawning Of whatever erat demonstrandum.

Just as a moment back a sons three tries At an embrace in Elysium Swam up into my very arms, and in and out Of the Latin stem itself, the phantom Verus that has slipped from very.

Medium, 14-carat nib, Three gold bands in the clip-on screw-top, In the mottled barrel a spatulate, thin Pump-action lever The shopkeeper Demonstrated, The nib uncapped, Treating it to its first deep snorkel In a newly opened ink-bottle, Guttery, snottery, Letting it rest then at an angle To ingest, Giving us time To look together and away From our parting, due that evening, To my longhand Dear To them, next day.

Who is this coming to the ash-pit Walking tall, as if in a procession, Bearing in front of her a slender pan Withdrawn just now from underneath The firebox, weighty, full to the brim With whitish dust and flakes still sparking hot That the wind is blowing into her apron bib, Into her mouth and eyes while she proceeds Unwavering, keeping her burden horizontal still, Hands in a tight, sore grip round the metal knob, Proceeds until we have lost sight of her Where the worn path turns behind the henhouse. Who is this, not much higher than the cattle, Working his way towards me through the pen, His ashplant in one hand Lifted and pointing, a stick of keel In the other, calling to where Im perched On top of a shaky gate, Waving and calling something I cannot hear With all the lowing and roaring, lorries revving At the far end of the yard, the dealers Shouting among themselves, and now to him So that his eyes leave mine and I know The pain of loss before I know the term.

His suits hung in the wardrobe, broad And short And slightly bandy-sleeved, Flattened back Against themselves, A bit stand-offish. Stale smoke and oxter-sweat Came at you in a stirred-up brew When you reached in, A whole rake of thornproof and blue serge Swung heavily Like waterweed disturbed.

I sniffed Tonic unfreshness, Then delved past flap and lining For the forbidden handfuls. But a kind of empty-handedness Transpired Out of suit-cloth Pressed against my face, Out of those layered stuffs That surged and gave, Out of the cold smooth pocket-lining Nothing but chaff cocoons, A paperiness not known again Until the last days came And we must learn to reach well in beneath Each meagre armpit To lift and sponge him, One on either side, Feeling his lightness, Having to dab and work Closer than anybody liked But having, for all that, To keep working.

Strapped on, wheeled out, forklifted, locked In position for the drive, Bone-shaken, bumped at speed, The nurse a passenger in front, you ensconced In her vacated corner seat, me flat on my back Our postures all the journey still the same, Everything and nothing spoken, Our eyebeams threaded laser-fast, no transport Ever like it until then, in the sunlit cold Of a Sunday morning ambulance When we might, O my love, have quoted Donne On love on hold, body and soul apart. Apart: the very word is like a bell That the sexton Malachy Boyle outrolled