I rhyme / I write / / Heaney/Hill

XXIII

Not all palimpsests are this eroded
to mý mind. A late sun buffs the granite.
Autumn lies lightly earthed, her funerals
the yellowed reddle blown bare, still abundant.
Should I say só much for Elijah's
chariot blessing these banked fires? If that
were even half-true I could give my name
to rehabilitation. Bien-aimées,
this calls for matching alchemies to make
gold out of loss in the dead season:
Petrarch revived by CHAR, though not
in so many words, la flamme sous l'abri,
the curfew-flame, uncovered. Frénaud,
bleakly resplendent. Where are you fróm?
I said; and he said, Montceau-
Montceau-les-Mines.
Once you ask that you can direct this,
objectivy fear, sorrow; the well-placed
lip-readers of failure now succeed.
Last days, last things, loom on: I write
to astonish myself. So much for all
plain speaking. Enter
sign under signum, I should be so lucky,
false cadence but an ending. Not there yet.

Geoffrey Hill, The Orchards of Syon



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.


Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist. Faber&Faber. 1991