Seamus Heaney — A KIte for Michael and Christopher

All through that Sunday afternoon a kite flew above Sunday, a tightened drumhead, an armful of blown chaff. I'd seen it grey and slippy in the making, I'd tapped it when it dried out white and stiff, I'd tied the bows of newspaper along its six-foot tail. But now it was far up like a small black lark and now it dragged as if the bellied string were a wet rope hauled upon to lift a shoal. My friend says that the human soul is about the weight of a snipe, yet the soul at anchor there, the string that sags and ascends, weigh like a furrow assumed into the hеavens. Before thе kite plunges down into the wood and this line goes useless take in your two hands, boys, and feel the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief. You were born fit for it. Stand in here in front of me and take the strain.