Poets' Wives
i.m. Seamus Heaney
'Away with the fairies' my wife will say
after we’ve been on a walk or I’m asked,
out of the blue, what I think of the dress
she’s spotted, when I’m only vaguely there –
pursuing the rhythms inside my head
and depriving her of my attention
as slowly, mysteriously, the lines
coalesce into 'another damn poem'.
And if at times I frustrate her, the fault
must lie with you whose work first inspired me,
devouring your books, until each three-, four-
or five-year interval has marked my life
from its adolescence: segments of time
that once dragged, yet speed exponentially
now that I see behind me fallow years
of paid work, bills, responsibility;
thankful at least for the late revival
of a gift which, however slight, I know
I betrayed: a bind your own exemplar,
Yeats, defined and you surely understood
when, in ‘An Afterwards’ perhaps only
half-jokingly, you had Marie plunge you
and all your kind into the ninth circle
for your assiduous care of the word.
Tom
Thu 31st Aug 2023 10:28
Brilliant David and one I can relate to. Often lost in a world of words, titles and lines much to the consternation of those around me, no doubt.