Postscript
And some time take the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
(Suggested by Recumbentman)
It seems to me that Heaney is one for poetry concerned with the nature of poetry and the poetic process. Take his Digging - unearthing a poem with a pen, unearthing spuds with a spade. The same here? Note that it's the postcript to a collection. Have his poems captured what he meant to say? And I'm wondering if there's anything in the techniques he displays in the poem - his ambiguous use of words? - which highlights the general nature of poetry?
Heaney gace my favourite definition of poetry. As a preamble, he talked about 'The Och Line'. Linguists draw dialect maps of the British Isles. A line can be drawn running roughly North-Eastto South-West. To the North and West of the line, people so 'Och'. To the South and East, they say something like 'Oh dearie me'.
"Poetry expresses the essential Och-ness of life".
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