SEAMUS HEANEY reads "Oysters"

Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.
Alive and violated,
They lay on their bed of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.
We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.
Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege
And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
~
From "Field Work"

[@TitularHeroine]

I don't think anyone will ever beat Heaney's translation of "Beowulf". Ever. A master of language.

[@niriop]

"My palate hung with starlight..."
I admit I've never cared much for Heaney (I own his selected from about 1965 to 1980 or so, and I never finished it--every verse was peat bogs and rolling barrows and so on), but this caught my ear very nicely.