March 3, 2026
Featured Poem
Lately we’ve been watching a video course on Ireland. It’s formatted such that you get a fair feel for what a guided tour might provide, even including a lesson on great Irish poets and writers. The lecturer included presentations on Wilde, Joyce, Yeats and Heaney. Being unfamiliar with Seamus Heaney I decided to read a bit of his work and selected for this month, Postscript.
Postscript
By Seamus Heaney
And some time make 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.
One reply on “The Poet’s Corner”
It was fun and cool to read The Raven again. You make me feel smart and educated.