Seamus Heaney

He lived there in the unsayable lights. He saw the fuchsia in a drizzling noon, The elderflower at dusk like a risen moon

Behaviour that’s admired is the path to power among people everywhere.

Believe that a farther shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

You carried your own burdens and very soon your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.

‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’. Yet I live here, l live here too, I sing Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours. . . The ‘voice of sanity’ is getting hoarse.

No such thing as innocent bystanding.

Then hunger killed where grief had only wounded.

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick For the big lift of these evenings

Here on earth my labours were The stepping stones to upper air. Lives that suffer and come right Are backlit by immortal light.

Of another world, unlearnable, and so To be lived by, whatever it was I knew Came back to me. Newfound contrariness. In check-out lines, at cash-points, in those queues Of wired, far-faced smilers, I stood off, Bulrush, head in air, far from its lough.

I’m out to find that village, Its low sills fragrant With ladysmock and celandine, Marshlights in the summer dark.

And in that dream I dreamt—how like you this?— Our first night years ago in that hotel When you came with your deliberate kiss