Poem of the day. Seamus Heaney
A Peacock’s Feather
Six days ago the water fell
To christen you, to work its spell
And wipe your slate, we hope, for good.
But now your life is sleep and food
Which, with the touch of love, suffice
You, Daisy, Daisy, English niece.
Gloucestershire: its prospects lie
Wooded and misty to my eye
Whose landscape, as your mother’s was,
Is other than this mellowness
Of topiary, lawn and brick,
Possessed, untrespassed, walled, nostalgic.
I come from scraggy farm and moss,
Old patchworks that the pitch and toss
Of history have left dishevelled.
But here, for your sake, I have levelled
My cart-track voice to garden tones,
Cobbled the bog with Cotswold stones.
Ravelling strands of families mesh
In love-knots of two minds, one flesh.
The future’s not our own. We’ll weave
An in-law maze, we’ll nod and wave
With trust but little intimacy –
So this is a billet-doux to say
That in a warm July you lay
Christened and smiling in Bradley
While I, a guest in your green court,
At a west window sat and wrote
Self-consciously in gathering dark.
I might as well be in Coole Park.
So before I leave your ordered home,
Let us pray. May tilth and loam,
Darkened with Celts’ and Saxons’ blood,
Breastfeed your love of house and wood –
Where I drop this for you, as I pass,
Like the peacock’s feather on the grass.
To know more about our poetry project, check our dedicated page on the ProMosaik website ProMosaik Poetry Page.
In the following you can download our newsletter about the last poetry projects we did in German, English, Italian, French, Greek, Russian and Turkish.
