The Spoonbait
So a new similitude is given us
And we say, The soul may be compared
Unto a spoonbait that a child discovers
Beneath the sliding lid of a pencil case,
Glimpsed once and imagined for a lifetime
Risen and free and spooling out of nowhere —
A shooting star going back up the darkness.
It flees him and burns him all at once.
Like the single drop that Dives implored
Falling and falling into a great gulf.
Then exit, the polished helmet of a hero
Laid out amidships above the scudding water.
Exit, alternatively, a toy of light
Reeled through him upstream, snagging on nothing.
by Seamus Heaney
from The Haw Lantern
Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987