All year the flax-dam festered in the heart <br />Of the townland; green and heavy headed <br />Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. <br />Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. <br />Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles <br />Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. <br />There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, <br />But best of all was the warm thick slobber <br />Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water <br />In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring <br />I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied <br />Specks to range on window-sills at home, <br />On shelves at school, and wait and watch until <br />The fattening dots burst into nimble- <br />Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how <br />The daddy frog was called a bullfrog <br />And how he croaked and how the mammy frog <br />Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was <br />Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too <br />For they were yellow in the sun and brown <br />In rain. <br />Then one hot day when fields were rank <br />With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs <br />Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges <br />To a coarse croaking that I had not heard <br />Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. <br />Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked <br />On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: <br />The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat <br />Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. <br />I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings <br />Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew <br />That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.<br /><br />Seamus Heaney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-of-a-naturalist/
