CHANGES As you came with me in silence to the pump in the long grass. I heard much that you could not hear: the bite of the spade that sank it, the slithering and grumble as the mason mixed his mortar, and women coming with white buckets like flashes on their ruffled wings. The cast-iron rims of the lid clinked as I uncovered it, something stirred in its mouth. I had a bird's eye view of a bird, finch-green, speckly white, nesting on dry leaves, flattened, still, suffering the light. So I roofed the citadel as gently as I could, and told you and you gently unroofed it but where was the bird now? There was a single egg, pebbly white, and in the rusted bend of the spout tail feathers splayed and sat tight. So tender, I said, 'Remember this. It will be good for you to retrace this path when you have grown away and stand at last at the very centre of the empty city.' -- Seamus Heaney