Mid-term Break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close
At two o’ clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying-
He had always taken funerals in his stride
And big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand.
And tell me they were sorry for my trouble
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest
Away at school, as my mother held my hand.
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs
At ten o’ clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up to the room, Snowdrops
And candles soothed the beside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot
No gaudy scares, the bumper knocked him clear
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
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