SCENE SHIFTS Only days after a friend had cut his name Into the ash, our kids stripped off the bark -- The first time I was really angry at them. I was flailing round the house like a man berserk And maybe overdoing it, although The business had moved me at the time; It brought back those blood-brother scenes where two Braves nick wrists and cross them for a sign. Where it shone like bone exposed is healed up now. The bark's thick-eared and welted with a scar -- Like the hero's in a recognition scene In which the old nurse sees old wound, then clasps brow (Astonished at what all this starts to mean) And tears surprise the veteran of the war. -- Derry's Seamus Heaney, "Scene Shifts," from Glanmore Revisited.