childhood is a cup already empty once you taste it

Visual of the week

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Every week, we pick one song, one visual piece, and one poem and share them with you.

That's it.

This is unusual. poetry

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Song of the week

Gotts Street Park - Tell me why

Poem of the week

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.

Then, in the bath, you’d notice the sweet flesh turning,
The juice fermenting, the fruit going 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.

Blackberry-Picking

by Seamus Heaney

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By unusual. poetry