Blackberry-picking by Seamus Heaney

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

Seamus Heaney

"Hope for a great sea-change..."

Much-loved British poet Seamus Heaney died this week. Several people posted this poem on their facebook walls:

From Seamus Heaney: 

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells. 

I love how he acknowledges that as well as justice there will be cures, and healing. I have come to see that hope is really the thing that keeps us going, gives us the will to keep on at this challenge of life.

Light at the end of the tunnel, the glimpse of the rope dangling down into the dark, only two more essays to mark, three more days till the holidays, five more days till next weekend, Spring will come after Winter, calm will follow the storm, justice will come in the end, God will bring it all together, there will be a renewed heaven and earth, Jesus will reign.