Nothing magnificent, nothing unknown.
A gazing out from far away, alone.
Just old truth dawning: there is no next-time-round.
Unroofed scope. Knowledge-freshening wind.
—Seamus Heaney
Air spanned, passage waited, the balance rode,
Nothing prevailed, whatever was in store
Witnessed itself already taking place
In a time marked by assent and by hiatus.
—Seamus Heaney
NOTE
—Petroglyphs, stone, lichen, stains, rock varnish — discrete galaxies in constant change. Eastern backslope of Abert Rim, Lake County, Oregon. 2025
Seamus Heaney selections:
—top: from the poem Lightning in Seeing Things (1991)
—above: from Settings, XIV, in Seeing Things
—below: from The Stone Verdict in The Haw Lantern (1987)
Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was awarded the Nobel in Literature in 1995.
CODA
from The Stone Verdict
Let it be like the judgement of Hermes,
God of the stone heap, where the stones were verdicts
Cast solidly at his feet, piling up around him
Until he stood waist-deep in the cairn
Of his own absolution: maybe a gate-pillar
Or a tumbled wallstead where hogweed earths the silence
Somebody will break at last to say, 'Here
His spirit lingers,' and will have said too much.
