SEAMUS HEANEY
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales,
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them .
Up on the little slope behip.d the houses,
set in the
sp~rse
bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancieqt woodel1
~apstan,
cracked , with long bleached handles
and some melapcholy stains , like dried blood,
where the iroqwork has rusted.
The old miln flccepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in .
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb .
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of
wh'ic~
is almost worn away .
Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet .
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns .
I also sang "A Mightly Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
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