music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings

When I Looked Down from the Bridge

PROGRAM NOTE
When I Looked Down From the Bridge sets a rather dark group of Seamus Heaney poems bookended by two traditional texts and and a poem by Richard Crashaw. I'm not sure why the Christian imagery of these particular poems spoke to me so strongly, but Heaney's poems are also lusty and earthy, and accept coldness and hardness as a part of life — much as the two folk texts do. Richard Crashaw lived in a time of aggressive religious discrimination, and the many who had their lives turned upside down surely influenced his melancholy, metaphysical poetry. The Crashaw setting was an afterthought, but I felt that his gentler voice was needed at the close of these sometimes smarting texts.

TEXTS
The Cruel Mother
She sat down below a thorn,
   Fine flowers in the valley
And there she has her sweet babe born.
   And the green leaves they grow rarely 

"Smile nae saw sweet, my bonie babe.
   Fine flowers in the valle
And ye smile sae sweet, ye'll smile me dead."
   And the green leaves they grow rarely   

She's taen out her little pen-knife,
   Fine flowers in the valle
And twinn'd the sweet babe o' its life. 
   And the green leaves they grow rarely 

She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon,
   Fine flowers in the valle
And there she's buried her sweet babe in. 
   And the green leaves they grow rarely 

As she was going to the church,
   Fine flowers in the valle
She saw a sweet babe in the porch. 
   And the green leaves they grow rarely 

"O Sweet babe, and thou were mine,
   Fine flowers in the valle
I wad cleed thee in a silk so fine." 
   And the green leaves they grow rarely 

"O mother dear, when I was thine
   Fine flowers in the valle
You did na prove to me sae kind." 
   And the green leaves they grow rarely 
traditional (Scottish) 


Serenades
The Irish nightingale
Is a sedge-warbler,
A little bird with a big voice
Kicking up a racket all night. 

Not what you'd expect
From the musical nation.
I haven't heard one— 
Nor an owl, for that matter. 

My serenades have been
The broken voice of a crow
In a draught or a dream,
The wheeze of bats 

Or the ack-ack
Of the tramp corncrake
Lost in a no man's land
Between combines and chemicals 

So fill the bottles, love,
Leave them inside their cots.
And if they do wake us, well,
So would the sedge-warbler. 
Seamus Heaney (b.1939) 


Dream
With a billhook
Whose head was hand-forged and heavy
I was hacking a stalk
Thick as a telegraph pole.
My sleeves were rolled
And the air fanned cool past my arms
As I swung and buried the blade,
Then laboured to work it unstuck. 

The next stroke
Found a man's head under the hook.
Before I woke
I heard the steel stop
In the bone of the brow. 
Seamus Heaney (b.1939) 


Servant Boy
He is wintering out
the back-end of a bad year,
swinging a hurricane-lamp
through some outhouse; 

a jobber among shadows.
Old work-whore, slave-
blood, who stepped fair-hills
under each bidder's eye 

and kept your patience
and your counsel, how
you draw me into
your trail. Your trail 

broken from haggard to stable,
a straggle of fodder
stiffened on snow,
come first-footing 

the back doors of the little
barons: resentful
and impenitent,
carrying the warm eggs 
Seamus Heaney (b.1939) 


May
When I looked down from the bridge
Trout were flipping the sky
Into smithereens, the stones
Of the wall warmed me. 

Wading green stems, lugs of leaf
That untangle and bruise
(Their tiny gushers of juice) 
My toecaps sparkle now 

over the soft fontanel
Of Ireland. I should wear
Hide shoes, the hair next my skin,
For walking this ground: 

Wasn't there a spa-well, 
Its coping grassy, pendent?
And then the spring issuing
Right across the tarmac. 

I'm out to find that village,
Its low sills fragrant
With ladysmock and celandine,
Marshlights in the summer dark. 
Seamus Heaney (b.1939) 


Scaffolding
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding; 

Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints. 

And yet all this comes down when the job's done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone. 

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me 

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall. 
Seamus Heaney (b.1939) 


Limbo
Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon
An illegitimate spawning, 

A small one thrown back
To the waters. But I'm sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly 

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open. 

She waded under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be 

A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ's palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there. 
Seamus Heaney (b.1939) 


The Bitter Withy
As it fell out on a Holy Day
   The drops of rain did fall, did fall,
Our Saviour asked leave of His mother Mary
   If He might go play at ball. 

“To play at ball, my own dear Son.
   It's time You was going or gone,
But be sure let me hear no complaint of You,
   At night when You do come home” 

It was upling scorn and downling scorn,
   Oh, there He met three jolly jerdins;
Oh, there He asked the jolly jerdins
   If they would go play at ball. 

“Oh, we are lords' and ladies' sons,
   Born in bower or in hall,
And You are some poor maid's child
   Born'd in an ox's stall.” 

“If you are lords' and ladies' sons,
   Born'd in bower on in hall,
Then at the last I'll make it appear
   That I am above you all.” 

Our Saviour built a bridge with the beams of the sun,
   And over it He gone, he gone He.
And after followed the three jolly jerdins,
   And drownded they were all three. 

It was upling scorn and downling scorn,
   The mothers of them did whoop and call,
Crying out, “Mary mild, call home your Child,
   For ours are drownded all.” 

Mary mild, Mary mild, called home her Child,
   And laid out Saviour across her knee,
And with a whole handful of bitter withy
   She gave him slashes three. 

Then He says to His mother, “Oh! the withy, oh! the withy,
   The bitter withy that causes me to smart, to smart,
Oh! the withy, it shall be the very first tree
   That perishes at the heart.” 
traditional (English) 


To the Infant Martyrs
Go, smiling souls your new-built cages break;
In Heaven you'll learn to sing ere here to speak.
Nor let the milky fonts that bathe your thirst
        Be your delay:
The place that calls you hence is at the worst
        Milk all the way. 
Richard Crashaw (c.1612–1649)