I sat all morning in the college sick bay <br />Counting bells knelling classes to a close. <br />At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. <br /> <br />In the porch I met my father crying-- <br />He had always taken funerals in his stride-- <br />And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. <br /> <br />The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram <br />When I came in, and I was embarrassed <br />By old men standing up to shake my hand <br /> <br />And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,' <br />Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, <br />Away at school, as my mother held my hand <br /> <br />In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. <br />At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived <br />With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. <br /> <br />Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops <br />And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him <br />For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, <br /> <br />Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, <br />He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. <br />No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. <br /> <br />A four foot box, a foot for every year.<br /><br />Seamus Heaney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mid-term-break/
