Monday, April 7, 2014

Seamus Heaney

Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, passed away on August 30, last year.

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we knew nothing 
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.



Since I first read this poem in college, it has been a favorite of mine, but I didn't know why.

He says that as children we thought we knew nothing / worth knowing. Perhaps he was suggesting that those things are more important than the supposedly worthwhile things that adults "know."

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