Human Chain
.
-for Terence Brown
.
Seeing the bags of meal passed hand to hand
In close-up by the aid workers, and soldiers
Firing over the mob, I was braced again
.
With a grip on two sack corners,
Two packed wads of grain I'd worked to lugs
To give me purchase, ready for the heave—
.
The eye-to-eye, one-two, one-two upswing
On to the trailer, then the stoop and drag and drain
Of the next lift. Nothing surpassed
.
That quick unburdening, backbreak's truest payback,
A Letting go which will not come again.
Or it will, once. And for all.
.
.
by Seamus Heaney
from Human Chain
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
