At the WellHead

Your songs, when you sing them with your two eyes closed
as you always do, are like a local road
we've known every turn of in the past -
That midge-veiled, high-hedged side-road where you stood,
Looking and listening until a car
would come and leave you lonelier
than you had been to begin with. So, sing on,
dear shut-eyed one, dear far-voiced veteran,

Sing yourself to where the singing comes from,
ardent and cut off like our blind neighbour
who played piano all day in her bedroom.
Her notes came out to us like hoisted water
ravelling off a bucket at the wellhead
where next thing we'd be listening, hushed and awkward.

That blind-from-birth, sweet-voiced, withdrawn musician
was like a silver vein in heavy clay.
Night water glittering in the light of day.
But also just our neighbour, Rosie Keenan.
She touched our cheeks. She let us touch her braille
in books like books wallpaper patterns came in.
Her hands were active and her eyes were full
of open darkness and watery shine.

She knew us by our voices. She'd say she "saw"
whoever or whatever. Being with her
was intimate and helpful, like a cure
you didn't even notice happening. When I read
a poem with Keenan's well in it, she said,
"I can see the sky at the bottom of it now."

Seamus Heaney


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I may have escaped to Cornwall.......