Seamus Heaney

Bye-Child

He was discovered in the henhouse where she had confined him. He was incapable of saying anything . When the lamp glowed, A yolk of light In their back window, The child in the outhouse Put his eye to a chink-- Little henhouse boy, Sharp-faced as new moons Remembered, your photo still Glimpsed like a rodent On the floor of my mind, Little moon man, Kennelled and faithful At the foot of the yard, Your frail shape, luminous, Weightless, is stirring the dust, The cobwebs, old droppings Under the roosts And dry smells from scraps She put through your trapdoor Morning and evening. After those footsteps, silence; Vigils, solitudes, fasts, Unchristened tears, A puzzled love of the light. But now you speak at last With a remote mime Of something beyond patience, Your gaping wordless proof Of lunar distances Travelled beyond love. from "Wintering Out" (1972)