Bank of a Canal - Seamus Heaney's last poem

Heaney's about to be published last poem, based on this painting by Gustave Caillebot, in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Full story here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/03/seamus-heaney-last-poem-national-gallery-ireland-anthology

Banks of a Canal by Seamus Heaney

Say canal and there's that final vowel

Towing silence with it, slowing time

To a walking pace, a path, a whitewashed gleam

Of dwellings at the skyline. World stands still.

The stunted concrete mocks the classical.

Water says, 'My place here is in dream,

In quiet good standing. Like a sleeping stream,

Come rain or sullen shine I'm peaceable'.

Stretched to the horizon, placid ploughland,

The sky not truly bright or overcast:

I know that clay, the damp and dirt of it,

The coolth along the bank, the grassy zest

Of verges, the path not narrow but still straight

Where soul could mind itself or stray beyond.

Edited October 3, 201412 yr by Québec