Marlins (Inspiration to Write )


When there are no marlins to take your line,

To un-spool the line in your pen -

You must grow the hands of a fisherman:

Push your boat out each day - like Hemingway.

Be ready, when a marlin leaps,

Even from a drain in your street,

To drop everything; stop;

Scrawl your poems on dusty car-tops.


----

The Old Man and the Sea

Marlins

SEAMUS HEANEY
(April 13, 1939 - )


Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.





-

One 3rd of June


You curled your fist,
Made your finger list -
To someday walk right into my mouth
And say “I do”
To the whole damn thing;
To build a home and a family;
To live long,
Bear the pain; arrange
This unfurling flower.





Happy Birthday