Submit a Poem Get Your Premium Membership  Mossbawn: Two Poems
in Dedication  Written by: Seamus Heaney | Biography  | Quotes
(1) |  1. Sunlight  There was a sunlit absence. The helmeted
pump in the yard heated its iron, water honeyed  in the slung
bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall
of each long afternoon. So, her hands scuffled over the
bakeboard, the reddening stove  sent its plaque of heat against
her where she stood in a floury apron by the window.  Now she
dusts the board with a goose's wing, now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails  and measling shins: here is a space again,
the scone rising to the tick of two clocks.  And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin.  2.
The Seed Cutters  They seem hundreds of years away. Brueghel,
You'll know them if I can get them true. They kneel under the
hedge in a half-circle Behind a windbreak wind is breaking
through. They are the seed cutters. The tuck and frill Of leaf-
sprout is on the seed potates