Postscript by Seamus Heaney is about taking time out to enjoy the beauty of the landscape around us. Ireland has some spectacular coastline and Heaney encourages us to step back from the everyday rush of life, and take a moment to enjoy the simpler things in life.
Ireland’s 100 favourite poems
Seamus Heaney
Postscript was voted inside Ireland’s 100 favourite poems by readers of the Irish Times in 1999.
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
