![]() ![]() It stirs emotions with its wistful gaze into the poet’s youth and the seemingly endless days of summer during childhood. Heaney’s language is descriptive and visual. I love the images this poem creates in my head as I read it. Seamus Heaney reading his poem “Blackberry-Picking” That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.Įach year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not. The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.īut when the bath was filled we found a fur,Ī rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. ![]() With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s. With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Until the tinkling bottom had been covered ![]() We trekked and picked until the cans were full, ![]() Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.Īmong others, red, green, hard as a knot. ![]()
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