Seamus Heaney's poetry workshop

I found years on that my Birth Certificate

And Christening Documents spelt out a nominal fate

Of which I was totally unaware,

Dragging in English, Irish, German lines of past blood,

Like good stock,

Corriedales and merinos of good fleece.

So thus I read,

“Sheamus Peter Brock Gebhardt”

Curious that I was never told,

Just expected to inhale the linguistic fold,

“Curiouser” still that Sheamus was “Irish for James”

But misspelt. Scotch Whiskey perhaps …

One line used to say, “We are pioneers you know.”

Another would take the branch-line that came 

In England’s south: Drakes and Brockmans coupled;

And then that brave girl Grace Bussell riding the surf

To pull out the colonists in their pretty flounces.

It was no wonder that a signal-man was needed,

Someone to make meaning of all the intersection and junctions,

A points’ muse would do.

Mid-life I found him. Poetry.

And Seamus accepted Sheamus,

I never uttered

I listened deep

We ate oysters

at “One Potato, Two Potato” 

(very Irish when you think about it)

The girls were intense

He gave me an “A”,

So I went away and began

To do what he had called me to do,

Seize the word and make palpable

The lives and lines we take,

All different but all joined.

“What’s in a name?” you may ask,

I don’t really know,

But for the time being, for now,

I’ll go along with what I was given,

Contradictions, complexities, conundrums and all.

Identity is, as clichés make clear, a journey,

From beginning to end.

Names are but baggage, taken on 

Or in the goods van.

It’s wonderful if writing is one of the tracks.

Saleyards and Hats

It was sale day

Holding his hands we would tag along.

It was all noise and smell

An auctioneer, hands, voice and hat, 

cajoling and cudgelling the buyers.

“What am I bid? Fine strong two-year olds, 

What am I bid? You won’t see them again.

Gimme a bid. Gimme a bid.”

Then “done, all done, done, all done

Sold to the man in the Akubra hat,

The one that the Prime Minister wears.”

We moved on from pen to pen with the mob

Sheep shit and cowpats as dung-soft carpet 

Dust and sun, dogs bark, ewes bleating. 

Everywhere tongues hung dryly,

Prices were up, prices were down

It didn’t make much difference,

The pub was near and the beer was cold,

“And things were always crook in the bush.” 

Poor farmers, sometimes they had to struggle,

To struggle, to keep alive the ‘hard-done-by’ voice. 

Of course, if you turn an Akubra upside down,

You have an open-cut mine.

“The Most Significant Day in Australian History”

Trespass is made legal

Bare footprints in the sand, toe-clear,

Crushed by heavy boot-prints.

The Governor has stepped ashore,

Powder blue powder pink

Patent leather