Catches the Horse
Then drag in the old grubbers
with dirt under their thumbnails,
characters, if you wish, who know a job of work,
who can grab the cow by her nostrils and force
the bottle neck between her big bare teeth,
or in spite of the low-set cut of him
catch the horse and slip an arm
around the neck and slip the blinders on
in a single move,
As when an age ago
you drove out west to County Clare
where wind and light played off each other,
on one side, the ocean, wild with foam and glitter,
and on the other, inland among stones, the slate-gray lake,
lit by the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
their feathers ruffed and ruffling, white on white,
and found yourself neither here nor there,
a hurry through which known and strange things passed
as big soft buffetings came at the car sideways
and caught your heart offguard and blew it open.
A tribute to the work of Seamus Heaney, offered
as a reaction to criticism of his latest poems.
