This is the 46th segment of “Squarings” from Heaney’s collection Seeing Things (1991).
Mountain air from the mountain up behind;
Out front, the end-of-summer, stone-walled fields;
And in a slated house the fiddle going
Like a flat stone skimmed at sunset
Or the irrevocable slipstream of flat earth
Still fleeing behind space.
Was music once a proof of God’s existence?
As long as it admits things beyond measure,
That supposition stands.
So let the ear attend like a farmhouse window
In placid light, where the extravagant
Passed once under full sail into the longed-for.
2 comments
Ken says:
Aug 30, 2013
Thanks for this. Have you heard him reading his translation of Beowulf? It’s just wonderful.
Georg Fries says:
Sep 1, 2013
Thank you so much, for the poem and for the picture.