Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Jon, it might help to read the blackberries as symbol of all sorts of childhood attachments, sweet in the moment, impossible to preserve.
A deliciously evocative poem, alight with the vivid sensations of summer and nature's fragile bounty. And against this is calibrated a child's awakening and somewhat wilful comprehension of how he interacts with it, and of his place in it. I really enjoy this poem every time I read it, quite viscerally, as if I am consuming it afresh each time.
my favourite poem. P.S Only an idiot wouldn't understand that this poem is not about picking fruit and letting it go moldy again and again
A precious activity that we as children liked to do was picking blackberries. It was a delectable berry that grew amongst the thorns. We risked scratches and stickings in order to obtain this luscious berry that could be eaten fresh or fermented for wine. They wont stay fresh very long. A nice write.
Late august and the rain bring to us sweetest ripen fruits; nice to read the poem
Like the delicious taste of childhood, black-berries cannot be made to last, only savored in the storage of our memories.
An amazing poem! The images of blackberry picking are so vivid! It is also a thought provoking poem as it says how our efforts may go in vain when do not care about small things.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
I remembered this poem when we went brambling this year, jusr after Heaney had died. I am not one of the people who believe that a poem has to be mournful to be credible, and the ending of this one strikes me as plain ridiculous. Ok, it might be a grave disappointment when the first lot of berries go mouldy, but only an idiot would let them repeatedly go rotten.