The Strand
The dotted line my father’s ashplant made
On Sandymount Strand
Is something else the tide won’t wash away.
The Sharpening Stone
He walked on air himself, never more so
Then when he had been widowed and the youth
In him, the athlete who had wooed her—
Breasting tapes and clearing the high bars—
Grew lightsome once again. Going at eighty
on the bendiest roads, going for broke
At every point-to-point and poker school,
‘He commenced his wild career’ a second time
And not a bother on him. Smoked like a train
And took the power mower in his stride.
Flirted and vaunted. Set fire to his bed.
Fell from a ladder. Learned to microwave.
………………………… .
So set the drawer on freshets of thaw water
And place the unused sharping stone inside it:
To be found next summer on a riverbank
Where scythes once hung all night in alder trees
And mowers played dawn scherzos on the blades,
Their arms like harpists’ arms, one drawing towards,
One sweeping the bight rim of the extreme.
by Seamus Heaney
from The Spirit Level
Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 0996
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