WHINLANDS All year round the whin Can show a blossom or two But it's in full bloom now. As if the small yolk stain >From all the birds' eggs in All the nests of spring Were spiked and hung Everywhere on bushes to ripen. Hills oxidize gold. Above the smoulder of green shoot And dross of dead thorns underfoot The blossoms scald. Put a match under Whins, they go up of a sudden. They make no flame in the sun But a fierce heat tremor Yet incineration like that Only takes the thorn-- The tough sticks don't burn, Remain like bone, charred horn. Gilt, jaggy, springy, frilled, This stunted, dry richness Persists on hills, near stone ditches, Over flint bed and battlefield. -- Seamus HEANEY Seamus Heaney, who writes incomparably about the mossy places of Ulster, grew up on the edge of the Sperrins. And it's true that in a mild winter the whin, or gorse, is in perpetual flower. The blossoms smell like sweet coconut. Boiling eggs in whin to dye them yellow is an Easter custom. Some farmers pound the prickles to feed to their horses - it's said to keep the coat glossy. Pigs like whin too. A good root in a whin bush is a pig's delight.