Seamus Heaney — Trout

Hangs, a fat gun-barrel, deep under arched bridges or slips like butter down the throat of the river. From the depths smooth-skinned as plums his muzzle gets bull’s eye; picks off grass-seed and moths that vanish, torpedoed. Where water unravels over gravel-beds he is fired from the shallows white belly reporting flat; darts like a tracer- bullet back between stones and is never burnt out. A volley of cold blood ramrodding the current.