Three by Heaney

Blackberry Picking
for Philip Hosbaum

Late August, given heavy rains 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.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then the red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre
But when the batch was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once of the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.


Personal Helicon
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.


The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all around the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you’re in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Poems by Seamus Heaney


*****
Wednesdays-I'm-n-Love. Poetry reading at Green Papaya on Wednesday, January 30th, around 8PM. Calling everybody who'd like to read--I don't want to limit the people I invite to the ones in my phonebook! Please text me if you want to read, or use the comments section. I will think up a list of readers, too. Sorry, I'm still on vacation mode (read: tamad). But let me know if you're interested!

*****
Anyway, tatlong kuwento.

1 So I went home to Iloilo for vacation. And to a talking-to courtesy of the parents--which I deserved, but for some parts. I will not talk of the deserved part--too embarrassing, I think, and circles back to the undeserved anger, anyway. My dad asked me why, after all these years--27 of them, I think he meant--did I just realize I wanted to pursue writing? What could I say? I could blame Pisay and its contract (and reduce the number of years of culpability by 12), or I could blame him for talking physics to me when I was a kid. But 27 seems like a good age as any to stop blaming outside forces for my choices. Still, it sucks to realize how much you still want parental approval--defiant 27 or otherwise--and realize you might never get it back.

2 My sister recently received her chem GRE results, with a whopping 97th percentile score. She also attended a chemistry conference complete with Nobel laureates a week ago. I, on the other hand, recently bought 5 poetry books at amazing prices, just firmly decided to get my MA in Creative Writing, and replaced a leaking faucet in my apartment with my own lil hands (plus a wrench, teflon tape, and a lot of swearing, but so what). Does she want to exchange places with me? I don't think so. Thing is, neither do I. Isn't it enough to know that?

3 My other sister, I recently grounded. So no partying for her until end of the semester. Who am I to impose this? And to think I took all precautions to avoid being a mom before I was ready. Turns out I didn't have to.

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So now what?