"Postscript" by Seamus Heaney

                                         "West Coast of Ireland" by Robert Henri, 1913

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
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

"Postscript" by Seamus Heaney, from The Spirit Level. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.

"Fireside" by Seamus Heaney

"A Talk At Fireplace" by Adriaen van Ostade, 1640

Always there would be stories of lights
hovering among bushes at the foot
of a meadow; maybe a goat with cold horns
pluming into the moon; a tingle of chains

on the midnight road. And then maybe
word would come round of that watery
art, the lamping of fishes, and I'd be
mooning my flashlamp on the licked black pelt

of the stream, my left arm splayed to take
a heavy pour and run of the current
occluding the net. Was that the beam
buckling over an eddy or a gleam

of the fabulous? Steady the light
and come to your senses, they're saying good-night.

"Fireside" by Seamus Heaney, from Selected Poems 1966-1996. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.