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From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] Seamus HEANEY -- "Mid-Term Break"
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 17:30:49 -0700

MID-TERM BREAK

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying --
He had always taken funerals in his stride --
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble."
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o-clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple.
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

-- Seamus Heaney born 1939 Mossbawn, Co. Derry

This thread:

• [IGW] Seamus HEANEY -- "Mid-Term Break" by "Jean Rice" <>