Human Chain by Seamus Heaney

Title: Human Chain

Author: Seamus Heaney

Genre: Poetry

Edition: Hardcover

Pages: 85

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

"Had I Not Been Awake"

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Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

A wind that rose and whirled until the roof

Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,

Alive and ticking like an electric fence:

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

It came and went so unexpectedly

And almost it seemed dangerously,

Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then

Lapsed ordinary. But not ever

After. And not now.

"Miracle"

-----------

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks

But the ones who have known him all along

And carry him in -

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked

In their backs, the stretcher handles

Slippery with sweat. And no let-up

Until he's strapped on tight, made tiltable

And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.

Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,

Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity

To pass, those ones who had known him all along.

"Human Chain"

------------------

Seeing the bags of meal passed hand to hand

In close-up by the aid workers, and soldiers

Firing over the mob, I was braced again

With a grip on two sack corners,

Two packed wads of grain I'd worked to lugs

To give me purchase, ready for the heave -

The eye-to-eye, one-two, one-two upswing

On to the trailer, then the stoop and drag and drain

Of the next lift. Nothing surpassed

That quick unburdening, backbreak's truest payback,

A letting go which will not come again.

Or it will, once. And for all.

"Herbal"

----------

Between heather and marigold,

Between sphagnum and buttercup,

Between dandelion and broom,

Between forget-me-not and honeysuckle,

As between clear blue and cloud,

Between haystack and sunset sky,

Between oak tree and slated roof,

I had my existence. I was there.

Me in place and the place in me.

*

Where can it be found again,

An elsewhere world, beyond

Maps and atlases,

Where all is woven into

And of itself, like a nest

Of crosshatched grass blades?