When all the other were away at mass! - Ireland's favourite poem.

[jamieboyo]

I suppose this poem was always going to win in a country of mammys boys!! Probably appropriate with Mother's Day looming....

My happiest childhood memories of time with my mother were also spent doing simple tasks like peeling potatoes, or baking on Saturday afternoons...A simple, emotive & happy poem (despite dealing with the thorny subject of death), Seamus Heaney really was a Genius!


When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

From New Selected Poems 1966-1987 © Estate of Seamus Heaney