My eyes have seen the years

 

Where does spirit live? Inside or outside

Things remembered, made things, things unmade?

What came first, the seabird's cry or the soul

 (Photo by Shadow)

Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?
 

Where does it roost at last? On dungy sticks

 In a jackdaw's nest up in the old stone tower

Or a marble bust commanding the parterre?

How habitable is perfected form?

 And how inhabited the windy light?

What is the use of a held note or held line

That cannot be assailed for reassurance?

(Set questions for the ghost of W.B.)

(Settings, xxii, Seeing Things, Seamus Heaney)

 You drive into a meaning made of trees.

Or not exactly trees. It is a sense

Of running through and under without let,

 

Of glimpse and dapple. A life all trace and skim
The car has vanished out of. A fanned name
Sensitive to the millionth of a flicker.
(Crossings, xxxi, Seeing Things, Seamus Heaney)