If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
Walk on air against your better judgement.
I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.
History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme
Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.
The end of art is peace.
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.
All I know is a door into the dark
I rhyme To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.
Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.
There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.
I shall gain glory or die.
The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
And a young prince must be prudent like that, giving freely while his father lives so that afterwards, in age when fighting starts steadfast companions will stand by him and hold the line.
In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Be advised my passport's green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen.
The dotted line my father's ashplant made On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away.
That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.
By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.
The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.
I want away to the house of death, to my father under the low, clay roof.
Then I thought of the tribe whose dances never fail / For they keep dancing till they sight the deer.
Since when," he asked, "Are the first line and last line of any poem Where the poem begins and ends?
He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.
If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way.
To work, her dumb lunge says, is to move a certain mass ...through a certain distance, is to pull your weight and feel exact and equal to it. Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.
More than loud acclaim, I love Books, silence, thought, my alcove. Pangur Bán Poem by Anon Irish Monk, Translated by Seamus Heaney
Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells.
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.
Words...To lure the tribal shoals to epigram / And order.
Is there life before death? That’s chalked up In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain, Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup, We hug our little destiny again.
How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we’re shown?
Love brought me that far by the hand, without The slightest doubt or irony, dry-eyed And knowledgeable, contrary as be damned; Then just kept standing there, not letting go.
Only the very stupid or the very deprived can any longer help knowing that the documents of civilization have been written in blood and tears, blood and tears no less real for being very remote.
I cannot be weaned/Off the earth's long contour, her river-veins.
Don’t have the veins bulging in your biro.
My body was braille for the creeping influences.
