Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. 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. 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. 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. Seamus Heaneys Blackberry-Picking is one of the great twentieth-century poems about disappointment, or, more specifically, about that moment in our youth. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
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