The out-of-context excerpt is al-
ways properly suspect; but we ab-
sorb almost everything we trust
in pieces, and we are continuous-
ly approached by pieces.
I was revisiting Seamus Heaney's
Station Island and found again,
pieces, which defy a last look.
How they turn.
'I at least was young and unaware
that what I thought was chosen was convention.
But all this you were clear of you walked into
over again. And the god has, as they say, withdrawn.
What are you doing, going through these motions?
..
Unless you are here taking the last look.'
Suddenly where he stood was bare as the roads
We both grew up beside, where a sick man
had taken his last look one drizzly evening
when steam rose like the first breath of spring,
a knee-deep mist I waded silently
behind him, on his circuits, visiting.
..
As if the prisms of the kaleidoscope
I plunged once in a butt of muddied water
surfaced like a marvelous lightship
and out of its silted crystals a monk's face
that had spoken years ago from behind a grille
spoke again about the need and chance
to salvage everything, to re-envisage
the zenith and glimpsed jewels of any gift
mistakenly abased ...
Seamus Heaney
Station Island
iv
final fragment
xi
first fragment
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