Blackberries

    Blackberry-Picking
    By Seamus Heaney

    Late August, given heavy rain and sun
    For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
    At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
    Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
    You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
    Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
    Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
    Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
    Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
    Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
    Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
    We trekked and picked until the cans were full
    Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
    With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
    Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
    With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
    We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
    But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
    A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
    The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
    The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
    I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
    That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
    Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

    Comments and faves

    1. Pandiyan (82 months ago | reply)

      Blackberry season, is it? I find similar pictures everywhere.

      Berries are nice and so is the photo.

    2. Lynn Morag (82 months ago | reply)

      Brilliant pairing and a lovely shot!

    3. raemin (82 months ago | reply)

      Must be very sweet(:

    4. ★

      Rosmaninho, Jam Hands (new blog!), and bilder2blogg added this photo to their favorites.

    5. bilder2blogg (61 months ago | reply)

      A very nice photo!

      I used it in an article about vitamin c (in swedish). Very nice colors.

      Thanks for using creative commons.

      Best regards
      hans

    6. ★

      Mirka23 added this photo to her favorites. (51 months ago)

    7. Arria Belli (49 months ago | reply)

      Thanks for uploading your photo under a Creative Commons license. This has enabled its use on Wikimedia Commons (Wikipedia's multimedia repository). You can see its image page here:

      commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ripe_and_unr ipe_blackber...

    8. Cameron Self (40 months ago | reply)

      Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Literary Britain and Ireland, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

    9. Cameron Self (40 months ago | reply)

      Thanks for adding David. Hope you don't mind - but I've also added a "Seamus Heaney" tag to aid the group's general search-ability.

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