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Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney read by Ben W Smith
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=n0BmsvtlSFU
This is my reading of Seamus Heaney’s nostalgic, poignant poem ‘Blackberry Picking’. Subscribe for more great poetic content. • #SeamusHeaney #IrishPoetry #BenReadsPoetry • Words: • 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.
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