Opened Ground (31 page)

• Unless his hair was fine-combed
  1
  
• Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble
  1
  
• Up-end the rain stick and what happens next
  1
  

• Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground
  1
  

• Walking with you and another lady
  1
  
• Was it wind off the dumps
  1
  
• We climbed the Capitol by moonlight, felt
  1
  
• We had already left him. I walked the ice
  1
  
• We have no prairies
  1
  
• We lived deep in a land of optative moods
  1
  
• We look up at her
  1
  
• We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts
  1
  
• We picked flints
  1
  
• WELCOME HOME YE LADS OF THE EIGHTH ARMY
  1
  
• Well, as Kavanagh said, we have lived
  1
  
• What she remembers
  1
  
• When all the others were away at Mass
  1
  
• When he stands in the judgement place
  1
  
• When human beings found out about death
  1
  
• When I had spread it all on linen cloth
  1
  
• When I hoked there, I would find
  1
  
• When I landed in the republic of conscience
  1
  
• When I lie on the ground
  1
  
• When the badger glimmered away
  1
  
• When the lamp glowed
  1
  
• When they said
  Carrickfergus
  I could hear
  1
  
• When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
  1
  
• When you have nothing more to say, just drive
  1
  
• When you plunged
  1
  
• When you sat, far-eyed and cold, in the basalt throne
  1
  
• Where does spirit live? Inside or outside
  1
  
• Where the sally tree went pale in every breeze
  1
  
• While the Constabulary covered the mob
  1
  
• White bone found
  1
  
• Why, when it was all over, did I hold on to them?
  1
  
• Willed down, waited for, in place at last and for good
  1
  

• Yeats said,
  To
  those
  who
  see
  spirits,
  human
  skin
  1
  
• You never saw it used but still can hear
  1
  
• You were the one for skylights. I opposed
  1
  
• You would hoist an old hat on the tines of a fork
  1
  
• Your songs, when you sing them with your two eyes closed
  1
  

This ebook edition published in 2010
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

All rights reserved
© Seamus Heaney, 1998

‘Crediting Poetry’ © The Nobel Foundation, 1995

The right of Seamus Heaney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–26279–3