Seamus Heaney – from The Tollund Man in Springtime

My heavy head. Bronze-buffed. Ear to the ground.
My eye at turf level. Its snailskin lid.
My cushioned cheek and brow. My phantom hand
And arm and leg and shoulder that felt pillowed
As fleshily as when the bog pith weighed
To mould me to itself and it to me
Between when I was buried and unburied.
Between what happened and was meant to be.
On show for years while all that lay in wait
Still waited. Disembodied. Far renowned.
Faith placed in me, me faithless as a stone
The harrow turned up when the crop was sown.
Out in the Danish night I’d hear soft wind
And remember moony water in a rut.

*

Cattle out in rain, their knowledgeable
Solid standing and readiness to wait,
These I learned from. I stood by in the wet.
My head as washy as a head of kale.
Shedding water like the flanks and tail
Of every dumb beast sunk above the cloot
fit trampled mud, bringing their heavyweight
Silence to hear on nosed-at sludge and puddle.
Of another world, unlearnable. and so
To he liked by, whatever it was I knew
Came back to me. Newfound contrariness.
In check-out lines, at cash-points, in those queues
Of wired, far-faced smilers. I stood off,
Bulrush, head in the air, far from its long lough.