National Poetry day in the UK

[dec]

It's National poetry day in the UK.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37565253

"Prince Charles launches National Poetry Day with Heaney poem

The Prince of Wales has been heard reading Seamus Heaney's poem The Shipping Forecast poem to mark National Poetry Day.
The recording was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today as part of the annual nationwide poetry celebration..."


If only he had read Heaney's "An Open Letter"

    Be advised my passport's green.
    No glass of ours was ever raised
    to toast the Queen.

[seafoid]

The Given Note

On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.
Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather
Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy
For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.
So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.
Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.

Seamus Heaney
from the collection 'Opened Ground, Poems 1966-1996', published by Faber and Faber 1998

[guy crouchback]

if its heaney its got to be

When all the others were away at Mass'


When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.