Agnes gave me “Seamus Heaney, 100 Poems” for Christmas. True to my usual time frame of life, I am just sitting down to read it now on this first day of March. Here is a poem I discovered today and love:
Requiem for the Croppies
by Seamus Heaney
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley —
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp —
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people, hardly marching — on the hike —
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.