Seamus Heaney's "The Bookcase"

"The Bookcase"

Seamus Heaney

Ashwood or oakwood? Planned to silkiness,

Mitred, much eyed-along, each vellum-pale

Board in the bookcase held and never sagged. 

Virtue went forth from its very shipshapeness.

Whoever remembers the rough blue paper bags
Loose sugar was once sold in might remember
The jacket of (was it Oliver & Boyd’s?)
Collected Hugh MacDiarmid. And the skimmed milk

Bluey-white of the Chatto Selected
Elizabeth Bishop. Murex of Macmillan’s
Collected Yeats. And their Collected Hardy.
Yeats of 'Memory'. Hardy of 'The Voice'.

Voices too of Frost and Wallace Stevens.
Off a Caedmon double album, off different shelves.
Dylan at full volume, the Bushmills killed.
'Do Not Go Gentle.' 'Don’t be going yet.'

 

                                *

Heavy as the gate I hung on once

As it swung its arc through air round to the hedge-back,

The bookcase turns on a druggy hinge, its load

Divulging into a future perfect tense

Where we hang loose, ruminating and repeating

The three words, 'books from Ireland', to each other,

Quoting for pleasure the Venerable Bede

Who writes in his History of the English Church

That scrapings off the leaves of books from Ireland

When steeping in water palliate the effect 

Of snake-bite. 'For on this isle,' he states,

'Almost everything confers immunity.'

                                *

Chiefly I liked the lines and weight of it.

A measuredness. Its long back to the wall

And carpentered right angles I could feel

In my neck and shoulder. And books from everywhere.

Cash in As I Lay Dying makes a coffin - 

For thirteen stated reasons - 'on the bevel'.

From first, 'There is more surface for the nails

To grip,' to last, 'It makes a better job.'

In Riders to the Sea Synge specifies

In the opening stage direction 'some new boards

Standing by the wall,' and in Maurya's speech

'White boards' are like storm-gleams on the flood

At the very end, or the salt salvaged makings

Of a raft for books, a bier to be borne.

I imagine us bracing ourselves for the first lift,

Then staggering for balance, it has grown so light.

For extensive footnotes and an inspiring blog in homage to Seamus Heaney.

Check out this NYTimes video dedicated to Heaney:

An interesting essay that discusses Heaney and cites this poem