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Today, on November 22nd, 2009, the site contains 196 poets, 8,692 poems and 7,656 comments.
Seamus Heaney - Anahorish

My "place of clear water,"
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass

and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,

after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows

those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills.

Added: on June 6th, 2006 at 8:44 AM | Viewed: 3508 times | Comments (5)


Anahorish - Comments and Information

Poet: Seamus Heaney
Poem: Anahorish

Year: Published/Written in 1987

Comment 5 of 5, added on September 26th, 2009 at 7:25 PM.

This poem was published well before 1987, I was studying it at school in 1982.
I have no great analysis or insight to add, but this poem brings me up short every time I read 'soft gradient / of consonant, vowel meadow' in the middle of it, it foregrounds the process of language in what would otherwise be a very physical set of sensations, excellent.

Andrew Barker from United Kingdom
Comment 4 of 5, added on July 19th, 2006 at 7:32 PM.

In this magnificent poem thee is an opposition being enacted. If on the one hand the place is of clear water, it darkens the stones. It seems that the knowledge this very first school Heaney has attended, has been helpful in some ways, but daring in other ways. I believe this is why he repeats this theme in some of his other poems

Viviane Oak from Brazil
Comment 3 of 5, added on June 6th, 2006 at 8:44 AM.

Anahorish the placename of a small rural area in South Derry in the North of Ireland. It borders Moss Bawn where Seamus Heaney was born and it was the first hill on his horizon. Seamus Heaney did attend Annahorish Primary School but it is the place Anahorish that the poem is written about. The placename means "place of clear/excellent water"

Malachy Gribbin from Ireland

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