Reading.

                                                        Black Abbey 25/8/1991.

                                                                for Seamus Heaney.

"I don't mean that he had wings on his ankles."

You told us how you saw your father as Hermes,

God of the market place, of drovers and dealers.

We understood, for here we worship our poets

in churches, and you moved easily in such company.

But I thought of your father standing there,

ash-plant in hand and dung on boots,

uncomfortable between poet son and Son of God.

Through him I saw you as you are, as he was;

white haired and paunched from many years spent

penning words neatly in twelve line sonnet form.

A cattle dealers' son whose mind grew wings.

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