“Bogland" by Seamus Heaney

Irish Elk, after original by Charles R. Knight

I cannot seem to read enough of Seamus Heaney's poems. Not every single one grabs me, but nearly all do, and nearly all in such a visceral, joyful, even sorrowful way. I feel each hair alive when I read Heaney. Here is one I especially love:

Bogland

by Seamus Heaney

“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.

 The Internet Poetry Archive has a downloadable mp3 of Mr. Heaney reading this poem, here.

Irish peat bog, by Amos, Israel, Creative Commons License