Seamus Heaney — The Settle Bed

Willed down, waited for, in place at last and for good. Trunk-hasped, cart-heavy, painted an ignorant brown. And pew-strait, bin-deep, standing four-square as an ark. If I lie in it, I am cribbed in seasoned deal Dry as the unkindled boards of a funeral ship. My measure has been taken, my ear shuttered up. Yet I hear an old sombre tide awash in the headboard: Unpathetic och ochs and och bobs, the long bedtime Anthems of Ulster, unwilling, unbeaten, Protestant, Catholic, the Bible, the beads, Long talks at gables by moonlight, boots on thе hearth, The small hours chimed sweetly away so nеxt thing it was The cock on the ridge-tiles. And now this is ‘an inheritance’ Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked In the long ago, yet willable forward Again and again and again, cargoed with Its own dumb, tongue-and-groove worthiness And un-get-roundable weight. But to conquer that weight, Imagine a dower of settle beds tumbled from heaven Like some nonsensical vengeance come on the people, Then learn from that harmless barrage that whatever is given Can always be reimagined, however four-square. Plank-thick, hull-stupid and out of its time It happens to be. You are free as the lookout, That far-seeing joker posted high over the fog, Who declared by the time that he had got himself down The actual ship had been stolen away from beneath him.