Free District and Circle by Seamus Heaney

DISTRICT AND CIRCLE
    Tunes from a tin whistle underground
    Curled up a corridor I’d be walking down
    To where I knew I was always going to find
    My watcher on the tiles, cap by his side,
    His fingers perked, his two eyes eyeing me
    In an unaccusing look I’d not avoid,
    Or not just yet, since both were out to see
    For ourselves.
                              As the music larked and capered
    I’d trigger and untrigger a hot coin
    Held at the ready, but now my gaze was lowered
    For was our traffic not in recognition?
    Accorded passage, I would re-pocket and nod,
    And he, still eyeing me, would also nod.

     
    Posted, eyes front, along the dreamy ramparts
    Of escalators ascending and descending
    To a monotonous slight rocking in the works,
    We were moved along, upstanding.
    Elsewhere, underneath, an engine powered,
    Rumbled, quickened, evened, quieted.
    The white tiles gleamed. In passages that flowed
    With draughts from cooler tunnels, I missed the light
    Of all-overing, long since mysterious day,
    Parks at lunchtime where the sunners lay
    On body-heated mown grass regardless,
    A resurrection scene minutes before
    The resurrection, habitués
    Of their garden of delights, of staggered summer.

     
    Another level down, the platform thronged.
    I re-entered the safety of numbers,
    A crowd half straggle-ravelled and half strung
    Like a human chain, the pushy newcomers
    Jostling and purling underneath the vault,
    On their marks to be first through the doors,
    Street-loud, then succumbing to herd-quiet …
    Had I betrayed or not, myself or him?
    Always new to me, always familiar,
    This unrepentant, now repentant turn
    As I stood waiting, glad of a first tremor,
    Then caught up in the now-or-never whelm
    Of one and all the full length of the train.

     
    Stepping on to it across the gap,
    On to the carriage metal, I reached to grab
    The stubby black roof-wort and take my stand
    From planted ball of heel to heel of hand
    As sweet traction and heavy down-slump stayed me.
    I was on my way, well girded, yet on edge,
    Spot-rooted, buoyed, aloof,
    Listening to the dwindling noises off,
    My back to the unclosed door, the platform empty;
    And wished it could have lasted,
    That long between-times pause before the budge
    And glaze-over, when any forwardness
    Was unwelcome and bodies readjusted,
    Blindsided to themselves and other bodies.

     
    So deeper into it, crowd-swept, strap-hanging,
    My lofted arm a-swivel like a flail,
    My father’s glazed face in my own waning
    And craning …
                               Again the growl
    Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble
    Of iron on iron, then a long centrifugal
    Haulage of speed through every dragging socket.
    And so by night and day to be transported
    Through galleried earth with them, the only relict
    Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward,
    Reflecting in a window mirror-backed
    By blasted weeping rock-walls.
                                                -             Flicker-lit.

TO GEORGE SEFERIS IN THE UNDERWORLD
    The men began arguing about the spiky bushes that were in brilliant
    yellow bloom on the slopes: were they caltrop or gorse? … “That
    reminds me of something,” said George. “I don’t know …”
    That greeny stuff about your feet
    is asphodel and rightly so,
    but why do I think
seggans
?
    And of a spring day
    in your days of ‘71: Poseidon
    making waves in sea and air
    around Cape Sounion, its very name
    all ozone-breeze and cavern-boom,
    too utterly this-worldly, George, for you
    intent upon an otherworldly scene
    somewhere just beyond
    the summit ridge, the cutting edge
    of not remembering.
    The bloody light. To hell with it.
    Close eyes and concentrate.
    Not crown of thorns, not sceptre reed
    or Herod’s court, but ha!
    you had it! A harrowing, yes, in hell:
    the hackle-spikes
    that Plato told of, the tyrant’s fate
    in a passage you would quote:
    “They