A Herbal

A Herbal

by Seamus Heaney, from Human Chain, 2010

After Guillevic's "Herbier de Bretagne"

Everywhere plants

Flourish among graves,

Sinking their roots

In all the dynasties

Of the dead.

*

Was graveyard grass

In our place

Any different?

Different from ordinary

Field grass?

Remember how you wanted

The sound recordist

To make a loop,

Wildtrack of your feet

Through the wet

At the foot of a field?

*

Yet for all their lush

Compliant dialect

No way have plants here

Arrived at a settlement.

Not the mare's tail,

Not the broom or whins.

It must have to do

With the wind.

*

Not that the grass itself

Ever rests in peace.

It too takes issue,

Now sets a fire.

To the wind,

Now turns its back.

*

"See me?" it says.

"The wind

Has me well rehearsed

In the ways of the world.

Unstable is good.

Permission granted!

Go, then, citizen

Of the wind.

Go with the flow."

*

The bracken

Is less boastful.

It closes and curls back

On its secrets,

The best kept

Upon earth.

*

And, to be fair,

There is sun as well.

Nowhere else

Is there sun like here,

Morning sunshine

All day long.

Which is why the plants,

Even the bracken,

Are sometimes tempted

Into trust.

*

On sunlit tarmac,

On memories of the hearse

At walking pace

Between overgrown verges,

The dead here are borne

Towards the future.

*

When the funeral bell tolls

The grass is all a-tremble.

But only then.

Not every time any old bell

Rings.

*

Broom

Is like the disregarded

And company for them,

Shows them

They have to keep going,

That the whole thing's worth

The effort.

And sometimes

Like those same characters

When the weather's very good

Broom sings.

*

Never, in later days,

Would fruit

So taste of earth.

There was slate

In the blackberries,

A slatey sap.

*

Run your hand into

The ditch back growth

And you'd grope roots,

Thick and thin.

But roots of what?

Once, one that we saw

Gave itself away,

The tail of a rat

We killed.

*

We had enemies,

Though why we never knew.

Among them,

Nettles,

Malignant things, letting on

To be asleep.

*

Enemies--

Part of a world

Nobody seemed able to explain

But that had to be

Put up with.

There would always be dock leaves

To cure the vicious stings.

*

There were leaves on the trees

And growth on the headrigs

You could confess

Everything to.

Even your fears

Of the night,

Of people

Even.

*

What was better then

Than to crush a leaf or a herb

Between your palms

Then wave it slowly, soothingly

Past your mouth and nose

And breathe?

*

If you know a bit

About the universe

It's because you've taken it in

Like that,

Looked as hard

As you look into yourself,

Into the rat hole,

Through the vetch and dock

That mantled it.

Because you've laid your cheek

Against the rush clump

And known soft stone to break

On the quarry floor.

*

Between heather and marigold,

Between spaghnum and buttercup,

Between dandelion and broom,

Between forget-me-not and honeysuckle,

As between clear blue and cloud,

Between haystack and sunset sky,

Between oak tree and slated roof,

I had my existence. I was there.

Me in place and the place in me.

*

Where can it be found again,

An elsewhere world, beyond

Maps and atlases

Where all is woven into

And of itself, like a nest

Of crosshatched grass blades?