for Michael Longley <br /> <br />As a child, they could not keep me from wells <br />And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. <br />I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells <br />Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. <br /> <br /> <br />One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. <br />I savoured the rich crash when a bucket <br />Plummeted down at the end of a rope. <br />So deep you saw no reflection in it. <br /> <br /> <br />A shallow one under a dry stone ditch <br />Fructified like any aquarium. <br />When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch <br />A white face hovered over the bottom. <br /> <br /> <br />Others had echoes, gave back your own call <br />With a clean new music in it. And one <br />Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall <br />Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection. <br /> <br /> <br />Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, <br />To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring <br />Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme <br />To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.<br /><br />Seamus Heaney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/personal-helicon/
