Grauballe+poem

A poem by Seamus Heany As if he had been poured in tar, he lies on a pillow of turf and seems to weep the black river of himself. The grain of his wrists is like bog oak, the ball of his heel like a basalt egg. His instep has shrunk cold as a swan’s foot or a wet swamp root. His hips are the ridge and purse of a mussel, his spine an eel arrested <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">under a glisten of mud. <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">The head lifts, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">the chin is a visor <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">raised above the vent <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; text-align: center;">of his slashed throat <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">that has tanned and toughened. <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">The cured wound <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">opens inwards to a dark <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">elderberry place. <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Who will say ‘corpse’ <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">to his vivid cast? <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">Who will say ‘body’ <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">to his opaque repose? <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">And his rusted hair, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">a mat unlikely <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">as a foetus’s. <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">I first saw his twisted face <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">in a photograph, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">a head and shoulder <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">out of the peat, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">bruised like a forceps baby, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">but now he lies <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">perfected in my memory, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">down to the red horn <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">of his nails, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">hung in the scales <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">with beauty and atrocity: <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">with the Dying Gaul <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">too strictly compassed <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">on his shield, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">with the actual weight <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">of each hooded victim, <span style="color: black; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">slashed and dumped.

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