Seamus Heaney’s Last Poem Published

The Guardian newspaper has published what it is believed to be the last poem of the late Seamus Heaney.

Heaney’s last poem is part of a collection marking the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Heaney, one of Ireland’s greatest and most loved poets, died in August of this year. His last poem, “In A Field”, is in its full text below. What do you think of it?

 

In A Field
By Seamus Heaney

And there I was in the middle of a field,

The furrows once called “scores’ still with their gloss,

The tractor with its hoisted plough just gone

 

Snarling at an unexpected speed

Out on the road. Last of the jobs,

The windings had been ploughed, furrows turned

 

Three ply or four round each of the four sides

Of the breathing land, to mark it off

And out. Within that boundary now

 

Step the fleshy earth and follow

The long healed footprints of one who arrived

From nowhere, unfamiliar and de-mobbed,

 

In buttoned khaki and buffed army boots,

Bruising the turned-up acres of our back field

To stumble from the windings’ magic ring

 

And take me by a hand to lead me back

Through the same old gate into the yard

Where everyone has suddenly appeared,

 

All standing waiting.