The poem
for T. P. Flanagan
We have no prairies To slice a big sun at evening-- Everywhere the eye concedes to Encrouching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye Of a tarn. Our unfenced country Is bog that keeps crusting Between the sights of the sun.
They've taken the skeleton Of the Great Irish Elk Out of the peat, set it up An astounding crate full of air.
Butter sunk under More than a hundred years Was recovered salty and white. The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot, Missing its last definition By millions of years. They'll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks Of great firs, soft as pulp. Our pioneers keep striking Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip Seems camped on before. The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. The wet centre is bottomless.
I'm enjoying Heaney's bog people poems. I've read a few poem of his before but nothing ever captured my imagination until "Strange Fruit" and "Punishment" and just now the one about the croppies, the meaning of which I will have to go look up. I saw some people they'd dug out of peatbog when I was up in Denmark eight years ago. They were on display in the churches there and I was fascinated by them but had forgotten about them until I read Heaney's work here. I read on another site that the one about the girl, "Strange Fruit," is actually an breakdown on the Irish political scene. Any thoughts?