<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Blackberry-Picking</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Late August, given heavy rain and sun</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">At first, just one, a glossy purple clot</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">We trekked and picked until the cans were full</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Until the tinkling bottom had been covered</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">But when the bath was filled we found a fur,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Seamus Heaney</div></div></body></html>