Nonce Words
The road taken
to bypass Cavan
took me west,
(a sign mistaken)
so at Derrylin
I turned east.
Sun on ice,
white floss
on reed and bush,
the bridge-iron cast
in an advent silence
I drove across,
then pulled in,
parked, and sat
breathing mist
on the windscreen.
Requiescat . . .
I got out
well happed up,
stood at the frozen
shore gazing
at rimed horizon,
my first stop
like this in years.
And blessed myself
in the name of the nonce
and happenstance,
the Who knows
and What nexts
and So be its.
by Seamus Heaney
from District and Circle;
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, NY, 2006