Anahorish 1944from the collection District and Circle
Anahorish 1944
'We were killing pigs when the Americans arrived.
A Tuesday morning, sunlight and gutter-blood
Outside the slaughterhouse. From the main road
They would have heard the squealing,
Then heard it stop and had a view of us
In our gloves and aprons coming down the hill.
Two lines of them, guns on their shoulders, marching.
Armoured cars and tanks and open jeeps.
Sunburnt hands and arms. Unknown, unnamed,
Hosting for Normandy.
Not that we knew then
Where they were headed, standing there like youngsters
As they tossed us gum and tubes of coloured sweets.'
©
Seamus Heaney, from the collectionDistrict and Circle
, published 2006 by Faber and Faber. By kind permission.
The Verdict
"Seamus Heaney's
District and Circleis a commanding, exhilarating work. In
an outstandingly strong field, this was an exceptional collection
of poems."
Sean O'Brien
chair
TS Eliot Prize 2006 judging panel
'
District and Circlebrims with lovely evocations,
reconstructions, restorations: a fireman's helmet; a barber shop
fitted into a "one-room, one-chimney house"; an aerodrome; a man
playing a saw "inside the puddled doorway / of a downtown shop" in
Belfast...[HEANEY HAS] the gift of saying something extraordinary
while, line by line, conveying a sense that this is something an
ordinary person might actually say.'
Brad Leithauser
The New York Times
"Due in large part to the richness of [ Heaney's] language, and
also to the undiminished freshness of his response to time-honoured
things, [
District and Circle's] consolidations have the feel of
celebrations. The book does not merely dig in, but digs deep."
Andrew Motion,
The Guardian