It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
Surplice and soutane:
Rained-on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door
Of the packed cathedral
Like blossoms on slow water.
The common funeral
Unrolled its swaddling band,
Lapping, tightening
Till we were braced and bound
Like brothers in a ring.
From Casualty by Seamus Heaney
For you Social Studies buffs out there, this is from a poem about the Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland. I like the continual imagery of water and fluidity throughout the poem, and how he describes the coffins as seeming to float from the door like "blossoms on slow water".
On a separate note, I'm pondering about how the things we find security in make us insecure in the most inconvenient situations. And I'm saying this as if no one had ever realised this before.
No comments:
Post a Comment