SEAMUS HEANEY
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spilling over," and then, thrillingly, halfway through, it does spill
over:
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
Earlier I noted that the habit of observation did not promise any ir–
ruption of the visionary. Yet here it is, a rhythmic heave which sug–
gests that something other is about to happen-although not im–
mediately. The colloquial note creeps back, and the temptation to
inspired utterance is rebuked by the seal who arrives partly like a
messenger from another world, partly like a deadpan comedian of
water. Even so, he is a sign that initiates a wonder as he dives back
into the deep region where the poem will follow, wooed with perfect
timing into the mysterious. Looking at the world of the surface, after
all, is not only against the better judgment of a seal; it is finally also
against the better judgment of the poet.
It
is not that the poet breaks faith with the observed world, the
world of human attachment, grandfathers, Lucky Strikes, and
Christmas trees. But it is a different, estranging and fearful element
that ultimately fascinates her: the world of meditated meaning, of a
knowledge-need which sets human beings apart from seals and her–
rings, and sets the poet in her solitude apart from her grandfather
and the old man, this poet enduring the cold sea-light of her own
wyrd
and her own mortality. Her scientific impulse is suddenly
jumped back to its root in pre-Socratic awe, and water stares her in
the face as the original solution:
If
you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame .
If
you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue .
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
