In case anyone has not noticed, Katy Perry's ubiquitous pop song rhymes "
skin tight jeans" with "
teenage dreams". Who will pay? As usual, no one.
Thinking of rhymes this morning on the last day of May, 2011: a recent collection of Seamus Heaney's poems, "
District and Circle," ends with a poem that stuck with me from the moment I read it: "The Blackbird of Glanmore."
Context: when Heaney was in his late teens he and his family lost his younger brother, who was killed aged four, struck by a car. Now in his 70s, Heaney revisits the grave and the absence. The sharp unfairness of a life snatched away at so young an age, is still with Heaney, though much of the emotion underpinning the poem is sort of transferred to a blackbird which he sees, and which sees him, in the graveyard.
The Blackbird of Glanmore
On the grass when I arrive,
Filling the stillness with life,
But ready to scare off
At the very first wrong move.
In the ivy when I leave.
It´s you, blackbird, I love.
I park, pause, take heed.
Breathe. Just breathe and sit
And lines I once translated
Come back: ´I want away
To the house of death, to my father
Under the low clay roof.´
And I think of one gone to him,
A little stillness dancer –
Haunter-son, lost brother –
Cavorting through the yard,
So glad to see me home,
My homesick first term over.
And think of a neighbour´s words
Long after the accident:
´Yon bird on the shed roof,
Up on the ridge for weeks –
I said nothing at the time
But I never liked yon bird.´
The automatic lock
Clunks shut, the blackbird´s panic
Is shortlived, for a second
I´ve a bird´s eye view of myself,
A shadow on raked gravel
In front of my house of life.
Hedge-hop, I am absolute
For you, your ready talkback,
Your each stand-offish comeback,
Your picky, nervy goldbeak –
On the grass when I arrive,
In the ivy when I leave.
