Wednesday, September 17, 2003


Seamus Heaney, from "Electric Light"


"Light came from the east," he sang,
"Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.
I could see headlands and buffeted cliffs.
Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man
It has not marked already."

And when their objection was reported to him --
That he had gone to bits and was leaving them
Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines
Neither here nor there ?
"Since when," he asked,
"Are the first line and the last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?"





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