A PILLOWED HEAD Matutinal. Mother-of-pearl Summer come early. Slashed carmines And washed milky blues. To be first on the road, Up with the ground-mists and pheasants. To be older and grateful That this time you too were half-grateful The pangs had begun -- prepared And clear-headed, foreknowing The trauma, entering on it With full consent of the will. (The first time, dismayed and arrayed In your cut-off white cotton gown, You were more bride than earth-mother Up on the stirrup-rigged bed, Who were self-possessed now To the point of a walk on the pier Before you checked in.) And then later on I half-fainted When the little slapped palpable girl Was handed to me; but as usual Came to in wide-open eyes That had been dawned into farther Than ever, and had outseen the last Of all those mornings of waiting When your domed brow was one long held silence And the dawn chorus anything but. -- Seamus Heaney (b. Co. Derry 1939)