I’m staying mostly with poetry as refuge, these days, because life isn’t getting simpler, far from it.

So, from Opened Ground, Selected Poems 1966-1996, the first two sections of Seamus Heaney’s Lightenings, drawn from Squarings :

I

Shifting brilliancies. The winter light

In a doorway, and on the stone doorstep

A beggar shivering in silhouette.

 

So the particular judgement might be set:

Bare wall stead and a cold hearth rained into –

Bright puddle where the soul-free cloud-life roams.

 

And after the commanded journey, what?

Nothing magnificent, nothing unknown.

A gazing out from far away, alone.

 

And it is not particular at all,

Just old truth dawning: there is no next-time-round.

Unroofed scope. Knowledge-freshening wind.

 

II

Roof it again. Batten down. Dig in.

Drink out of tin. Know the scullery cold,

A latch, a door-bar, forged tongs and a grate.

 

Touch the crossbeam, drive iron in a wall,

Hang a line to verify the plumb

From lintel, coping-stone and chimney-breast.

 

Relocate the bedrock in the threshold.

Take squarings from the recessed gable pane.

Make your study the unregarded floor.

 

Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure

The bastion of sensation. Do not waver

Into language. Do not waver in it.