Gift of the Gab

Walk on air against your better judgement – Seamus Heaney, The Gravel Walks

I am getting drunk
with Seamus

He still rolls
his soot vowels out

from his distiller’s
mouth

We are considering
fallacies

from our buttressed
high attics

[Aloft in our crosstrees
he wrote]

My English accent flattens –
avoids rolled port-barrels

I will not sweat his peat
or grain

I once got pissed
on my brother-in-law’s poitín

I then sweated poetry
for days