—an excerpt from
A Herbal
What was better then
Than to crush a leaf or a herb
between your palms,
Then wave it slowly, soothingly
Past your mouth and nose
And breathe?
*
If you know a bit
About the universe
It's because you've taken it in
Like that,
Looked as hard
As you look into yourself,
Into the rat hole,
Through the vetch and dock
That mantled it.
Because you've laid your cheek
Against the rush clump
And known soft stone to break
On the quarry floor.
*
Between heather and marigold,
Between sphagnum and buttercup,
Between dandelion and broom,
Between forget-me-not and honeysuckle,
As between clear blue and cloud,
Between haystack and sunset sky,
Between oak tree and slated roof
I had my existence. I was there.
Me in place and the place in me.
*
Where can it be found again,
An elsewhere world, beyond
Maps and atlases,
Where all is woven into
And of itself, like a nest
Of crosshatched grass blades?
by Seamus Heaney
from Human Chain
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010