Poetry recommendationAs part of my mental health jam jar, I try every day (not always successfully) to read or listen to one piece of poetry. For me, poetry represents the most beautiful use of language and language is my favourite form of art. My favourite poet is the great Seamus Heaney (sorry, Robert Frost and W H Auden, who come in a close second and third respectively). I was thrilled to see the recent publication of the complete works of Seamus Heaney and very quickly bought myself a copy. It is a weighty tome (naturally) but a wonderful collection of poems and commentary on each. I have found new poems I didn’t know, and returned to old favourites, including ‘Mid-Term Break’, included below in full, which contains one of the most moving lines in the history of the written word. It is the last line, in case you were wondering. Mid-Term Break - by Seamus Heaney
I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying— He had always taken funerals in his stride— And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'. Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
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