A Poem for a Thursday #255

Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet and playwright. He wrote over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism. In 1995 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” At one time, his books made up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the U.K. After his death playwright Tom Stoppard said of him “Seamus never had a sour moment, neither in person nor on paper.”

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Postscript 
Seamus Heaney