Poets

The other night, while watching TV, my mind drifted to the question, "who are our modern poets"? I couldn't think of one.

Then the next day, I read that Irish poet Seamish Heaney had died.

That coincidence has bothered me all weekend, so I pulled out the only two anthologies of Heaney's that I have boxed away, and read bits of them trying to remember why I bought them years ago.

A Call

'Hold on,' she said, 'I'll just run out and get him.

The weather here's so good, he took the chance

To do a bit of weeding.'

So I saw him

Down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig.

Touching, inspecting, separating one

Stalk from the other, gently pulling up

Everything not tapered, frail and leafless,

Pleased to feel each little weed-root break,

But rueful also ...

Then found myself listening to

The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks

Where the phone lay unattended in a calm

Of mirror glass and sunstruck pendulums ...

And found myself thinking: if it were nowadays,

This is how Death would summon Everyman.

Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.