Mossbawn Sunlight for BBC 100

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose’s wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith’s scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

Reproduced by kind permission of the BBC for the BBC 100 collection - From North (Faber, 1975), copyright Seamus Heaney 1975, used by permission of the author and the publisher. Seamus Heaney reading 'Mossbawn Sunlight', recorded for BBC Radio and broadcast on 8th June 1975. Seamus Heaney reading 'Mossbawn Sunlight', recorded for BBC Radio and broadcast on 8th June 1975.

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