Act of Union
by Seamus Heaney
I
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.
II
And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they’re cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again
I think this is one if the best things I have ever read.
Melanie —
Can I just say how much I love your Daily Dose of Poetry and Art series. It’s a wonderful walk down memory lane in some cases (though I must say that I’m terribly jealous that you had a class with Dr. Cowan, as I never got the opportunity!) and a revelation of new poems in others. Thank you!
Melanie —
Can I just say how much I love your Daily Dose of Poetry and Art series. It’s a wonderful walk down memory lane in some cases (though I must say that I’m terribly jealous that you had a class with Dr. Cowan, as I never got the opportunity!) and a revelation of new poems in others. Thank you!
Colleen, I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. I’m really liking the discipline of looking at poetry more regularly, revisiting old favorites and finding new poems and new poets. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to sustain it; but I’ll try my best.