A couple of years ago, I shared Seamus Heaney’s poem Digging. Here’s another one from this fabulous Irish poet:
Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were ‘sorry for my trouble’.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney (1939 – 2013) was a schoolboy in 1953 when his brother Christopher was killed in a road accident. In this spare, raw poem, he brilliantly captures his parents’ grief – the tears of a man who usually took funerals in his stride, the “angry tearless sighs” coughed out by his mother, the blissful unawareness of the baby. Then he brings in his own memories – the candles, the conventional and well-meant words of the neighbours, and the sight of his little brother, lying still in a coffin, the lack of scars except for that lethal bruise on the temple, which looks like a poppy (a flower so closely associated with death). There’s the mention of snowdrops, flowers associated with spring and the burgeoning of new life – an ironic contrast to the young life which has been cut short. And finally, that heart-breaking last line, standing in its own short stanza, giving the age of the dead boy and the measurements of his coffin. It’s almost too hard to read.
This poem was included in his first major volume of poetry, Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966.
You can listen Seamus Heaney himself read it here:
What brilliance Heaney had as a poet, that he captured so much, so powerfully, in such a short poem. Does it move you as much as it does me? Let me know by leaving a comment.
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Susannah Fullerton: Seamus Heaney is born
Susannah Fullerton: Death of a Naturalist is first published
Susannah Fullerton: Seamus Heaney & Digging
Susannah Fullerton: Seamus Heaney & Mid-Term Break
Susannah Fullerton: Seamus Heaney is awarded the Nobel Prize
Susannah Fullerton: Seamus Heaney dies
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995
Poetry Foundation: Seamus Heaney
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
Betty
The final line of this poem is filled with emotion even though the words
are simple.
A work of art.
Susannah Fullerton
Yes, so simple and so incredibly moving.
Maria
A heartbreaking poem, beautiful in its sadness. I found the depiction of the bereaved mother especially poignant. Heaney paints a remarkable and moving portrait of an entire family in so very few words.
Susannah Fullerton
Yes, there is huge economy of language and it tells such a moving story.
Vivien Wilson
Thank you, Susannah, for including this heart-breakingly beautiful poem. His rendition on YouTube brought me to tears. His economy of words is brilliant and devoid of all sentimentality.
Susannah Fullerton
I always get a great lump in my throat when I read the poem, and it is so wonderful to listen to Seamus Heaney read it himself, isn’t it.
Susan King
Seamus Heaney is a talented wordsmith as his poetry testifies.
This poem is close to my heart as I lost a younger brother due to a drunk driver in a head on crash.
Did not know poppies are closely associated with death.
I feel Seamus has captured the atmosphere surrounding the sudden death of a loved one.
Thankyou Susannah for posting this poem.
Susannah Fullerton
I can hardly imagine how much that poem must resonate with you as a result of your own family tragedy. Poppies became associated with death as a result of World War I. They were the first flowers to bloom in the disturbed soil of battlefields, and then John Macrae wrote that wonderful war poem “In Flanders Fields the Poppies Grow’.
Karen
Yes, incredibly emotional by just the essential words and the succinct passages…. respecting words can never capture the emotional depth of such an event. Without one emotional word uttered, hearing the poem through the author’s own voice on the utube clip is heartwrenching.
Susannah Fullerton
It’s a magic combination of great economy with words, no sentimentality and the child’s eye view of the tragedy, which makes it so incredibly moving.
Leigh Mackay
Thanks. Good to engage with this poem again.
Wonderful how he leads you through, as on a mystery tour, to find out who has died.
Susannah Fullerton
Yes, it is like a mystery tour, and such a moving poem.
Anita Jawary
Dear Susannah,
Thank you for sharing this poem with us.
I found it so very moving. It brought tears to my eyes.
Susannah Fullerton
Yes, it really is a poem that brings a lump to the throat. I am glad you also felt moved by it.