The hosed-down chamfered concrete pleases him.
He'll wait a while before he kills the light
On the cleaned-up yard, its pails and farrowing crate,
And the cast-iron pump immobile as a herm
Upstanding elsewhere, in another time.
More and more this last look in the wet
Shine of the place is what means most to him -
And to repeat the phrase, 'My head is light',
Because it often is as he reaches back
And switches off, a home-based man at home
In the end with little. Except this same
Night after nightness, redding up the work,
The song of a tubular steel gate in the dark
As he pulls it to and starts his uphill trek.
(c) Seamus Heaney 2006, from District and Circle, pub. faber and faber 2006
So often Heaney's everyday words placed in order fit together like a dry stone wall to make a solid memory of a thing.
His passing, announced by his family this morning, makes this a sad day.
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