"Towards the bottle-green, still / Shade of an oak"
Dublin Core
Title
"Towards the bottle-green, still / Shade of an oak"
Subject
Lough Derg--Station Island--Seamus Heaney--Poetry
Description
An extract from Seamus Heaney's poem 'Station Island'
Creator
Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013
Source
Heaney, Seamus, 'Station Island', in Station Island collection, VI, pp. 75-6
Publisher
Faber & Faber, London
Date
1984
Rights
Citation for the purposes of criticism
Format
Poetry Collection
Language
English
Type
Poetry
Identifier
DD_0286
Coverage
54.609009,-7.871214
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
"Freckle-face, fox-head, pod of the broom,
Catkin-pixie, little fern-swish:
Where did she arrive from?
Like a wish wished
And gone, her I chose at 'secrets'
And whispered to. When we were playing houses.
I was sunstruck at the basilica door -
A stillness far away, a space, a dish,
A blackened tin and knocked over stool -
Like a tramped neolithic floor
Uncovered among dunes where the bent grass
Whispers on like reeds about Midas's
Secrets, secrets. I shut my ears to the bell
. Head hugged. Eyes shut. Lead ears. Don't tell. Don't tell.
A stream of pilgrims answering the bell
Trailed up the steps as I went down them
Towards the bottle-green, still
Shade of an oak. Shades of the Sabine farm
On the beds of Saint Patrick's Purgatory.
Late summer, country distance, not the air:
Loosen the toga for wine and poetry
Till Phoebus returning routs the morning star.
As a somnolent hymn to Mary rose
I felt an old pang that bags of grain
And the sloped shafts of forks and hoes
Once mocked me with, at my own long virgin
Fasts and thirsts, my nightly shadow feasts,
Haunting the granaries of words like breasts
As if I knelt for years at a keyhole
Mad for it, and all that ever opened
Was the breathed-on grille of a confessional
Until that night I saw her honey-skinned
Shoulder-blades and the wheatlands of her back
Through the wide keyhole of her keyhole dress
And a window facing the deep south of luck
Opened and I inhaled the land of kindness
As little flowers that were all bowed and shut
By the night chills rise on their stems and open
As soon as they have felt the touch of sunlight,
So I revived in my own wilting powers
And my heart flushed, like somebody set free.
Translated, given, under the oak tree."
Catkin-pixie, little fern-swish:
Where did she arrive from?
Like a wish wished
And gone, her I chose at 'secrets'
And whispered to. When we were playing houses.
I was sunstruck at the basilica door -
A stillness far away, a space, a dish,
A blackened tin and knocked over stool -
Like a tramped neolithic floor
Uncovered among dunes where the bent grass
Whispers on like reeds about Midas's
Secrets, secrets. I shut my ears to the bell
. Head hugged. Eyes shut. Lead ears. Don't tell. Don't tell.
A stream of pilgrims answering the bell
Trailed up the steps as I went down them
Towards the bottle-green, still
Shade of an oak. Shades of the Sabine farm
On the beds of Saint Patrick's Purgatory.
Late summer, country distance, not the air:
Loosen the toga for wine and poetry
Till Phoebus returning routs the morning star.
As a somnolent hymn to Mary rose
I felt an old pang that bags of grain
And the sloped shafts of forks and hoes
Once mocked me with, at my own long virgin
Fasts and thirsts, my nightly shadow feasts,
Haunting the granaries of words like breasts
As if I knelt for years at a keyhole
Mad for it, and all that ever opened
Was the breathed-on grille of a confessional
Until that night I saw her honey-skinned
Shoulder-blades and the wheatlands of her back
Through the wide keyhole of her keyhole dress
And a window facing the deep south of luck
Opened and I inhaled the land of kindness
As little flowers that were all bowed and shut
By the night chills rise on their stems and open
As soon as they have felt the touch of sunlight,
So I revived in my own wilting powers
And my heart flushed, like somebody set free.
Translated, given, under the oak tree."
Original Format
Poem in collection
Citation
Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013, “"Towards the bottle-green, still / Shade of an oak",” Digital Derg: A Deep Map, accessed April 24, 2024, https://digitalderg.eu/items/show/306.