-----Original Message----- Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:43:34 -0700 From: "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> From: ireland-l@rootsweb.com Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 2:02 AM A CONSTABLE CALLS His bicycle stood at the window-sill, The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher Skirting the front mudguard, Its fat black handlegrips Heating in sunlight, the "spud" Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back, The pedal treads hanging relieved Of the boot of the law. His cap was upside down On the floor, next his chair. The line of its pressure ran like a bevel In his slightly sweating hair. He had unstrapped The heavy ledger, and my father Was making tillage returns In acres, roods, and perches. Arithmetic and fear. I sat staring at the polished holster With its buttoned flap, the braid cord Looped into the revolver butt. "Any other root crops? Mangolds? Marrowstems? Anything like that?" "No." But was there not a line Of turnips where the seed ran out In the potato field? I assumed Small guilts and sat Imagining the black hole in the barracks. He stood up, shifted the baton-case Further round on his belt, Closed the domesday book, Fitted his cap back with two hands, And looked at me as he said goodbye. A shadow bobbed in the window. He was snapping the carrier spring Over the ledger. His boot pushed off And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked. -- Seamus Heaney, born Mossbawn, Co. Derry ------------------------------ A DRINK OF WATER She came every morning to draw water Like an old bat staggering up the field: The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter And slow dimineundo as it filled, Announced her. I recall Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel Of the brimming bucket, and the treble Creak of her voice like the pump's handle. Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable It fell back through her window and would lie Into the water set out on the table. Where I have dipped to drink again, to be Faithful to the admonishment on her cup, "Remember the Giver," fading off the lip. ------------------------------ AT A POTATO DIGGING I A mechanical digger wrecks the drill, Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould. Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold. Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch A higgledy line from hedge to headland; Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand Tall for a moment but soon stumble back To fish a new load from the crumbled surf. Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black Mother. Processional stooping through the turf Recurs mindlessly as autumn. Centuries Of fear and homage to the famine god Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees, Make a seasonal altar of the sod. II Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered like inflated pebbles. Native to the black hutch of clay where the halved seed shot and clotted these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem the petrified hearts of drills. Split by the spade, they show white as cream. Good smells exude from crumbled earth. The rough bark of humus erupts knots of potatoes (a clean birth) whose solid feel, whose wet inside promises taste of ground and root. To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed. III Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on wild higgledy skeletons scoured the land in "forty-five," wolfed the blighted root and died. The new potato, sound as stone, putrefied when it had lain three days in the long clay pit. Millions rotted along with it. Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard, faces chilled to a plucked bird. In a million wicker huts beaks of famine snipped at guts. A people hungering from birth, grubbling, like plants, in the bitch earth, were grafted with a great sorrow. Hope rotted like a marrow. Stinking potatoes fouled the land, pits turned pus into filthy mounds: and where potato digger are you still smell the running sore. IV Under a gay flotilla of gulls The rhythm deadens, the workers stop. Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop Down in the ditch and take their fill, Thankfully breaking timeless fasts; Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts. -- Seamus Heaney