Byron on Heaney - a bit of a last-minute effort.
The favourite bard of those who dish out prizes
Is Heaney, Irish and potato-faced,
He's slow and thoughtful, like a man who's wise is,
And never jars you with a lapse of taste,
With phrases quotable, or with surprises.
He shows us farmers' boots, all mud-encased,
Plus intimations of the deep beyond
That come from groping frogspawn in a pond.
Perhaps you ought to read him if you're tickled
By thoughts of ancient corpses gold as honey
That once in some far northern bog got pickled.
That's nice enough – but I would not put money
On Seamus when posterity has sickled
Our crop of poets. Won't they think it funny
That he wrote reams on farmyard and on cow
And rarely thought about describing now?
|