Brian Hamilton

The Fragment

          “Light came from the east,” he sang,
“Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.
I could see headlands and buffeted cliffs.
          Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man
It has not marked already.”

And when their objection as reported to him—
That he had gone to bits and was leaving them
Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines
Neither here nor there—
          “Since when,” he asked,
“Are the first line and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?”

—Seamus Heaney, in Electric Light: Poems, p. 70.

15 May 2007 |
tags: Poetry