Late August, given heavy rain and sun <br />For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. <br />At first, just one, a glossy purple clot <br />Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. <br />You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet <br />Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it <br />Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for <br />Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger <br />Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots <br />Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. <br />Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills <br />We trekked and picked until the cans were full <br />Until the tinkling bottom had been covered <br />With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned <br />Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered <br />With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. <br />We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. <br />But when the bath was filled we found a fur, <br />A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. <br />The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush <br />The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. <br />I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair <br />That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. <br />Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.<br /><br />Seamus Heaney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blackberry-picking-3/
