by: Seamus Heaney
for Philip Hobsbaum
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.
_________________________
Had some blackberries for breakfast this morning, along with blueberries and crisp bacon with eggs. It was all delicious. I'm generally not the kind of person who takes pictures of food, but those blackberries were dark and beautiful and full of summer.
I used to be a winter person. Loved the first snow of winter. Waited for blizzards, with their banshee winds and screams. Then I was an autumn person for a very long time. The colors and lettuce morning air. Now, I'm a summer person. I mourn when I see the first leaf turning color at the end of August. I want warmth and laziness and blackberries.
Saint Marty must be getting old.
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